The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
only in the châlet, but among the few émigrés elsewhere in the village, there was now relief and satisfaction. At last Monsieur was to bestir himself to action and hasten to Toulon.
The only person whom the events at all disgruntled was the Comte de Plougastel. Younger than the Lord of Gavrillac by ten years, of great physical vigour and endurance, accustomed, moreover, to come and go as an ambassador of the Princes, he took it as a personal reflection upon his ability in these matters that Monsieur de Kercadiou should have been preferred to him for that mission to the camp of the Prince de Condé. He complained of it to d'Entragues.
'To be frank, I find it very odd. I am curious to know in what I have deserved Monsieur's displeasure.'
'His displeasure! My dear Plougastel! It is the very contrary. His Highness esteems you so highly that he desires you near his person in this crisis.'
Plougastel's face lightened. 'I am, then, to accompany him to Toulon?'
'That is hardly possible, however desirable to his Highness. You will understand that Monsieur's attendance on that journey must be reduced to the bare minimum.'
'But then?' Plougastel was frowning again. 'Monsieur d'Entragues, it seems to me that you contradict yourself. Monsieur does not send me on a mission of a kind in which I am experienced. He sends in my place a man who is barely equal to the fatigue of the journey. Especially in this December weather. He does this because he desires me near his person. Yet in two days' time, when he departs for Toulon, I am to be left behind.'
D'Entragues was smooth with him. 'Things often appear contradictory without being so at heart. His Highness has his own ends to serve. I can tell you no more. If you are not satisfied, you must ask Monsieur, himself.'
Plougastel departed more aggrieved than he had come, and went to plague his countess with his ill-humoured conjectures.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE INTERRUPTION
Aline sat in the room above-stairs which for nearly a year now she and her uncle had occupied at the Bear Inn. Never in her life had she felt more alone than on this evening of that day on which Monsieur de Kercadiou had set out on his long ride to Condé in Belgium. The loneliness of it seemed to renew the sense of bereavement which had been with her in those black weeks just after she had received the news of the death of André-Louis. She was weary at heart and despondent. Life seemed a dreary emptiness.
She had supped alone, very sparingly and mechanically. The table had been cleared, and the candles snuffed. In a kindly sympathetic apprehension of her loneliness, the landlord had come in person to perform this little service and solicitously to enquire if there was anything still lacking for her comfort.
She sat sadly dreaming, a book of Horace in her lap, a translation of the Odes. It was not a volume she would have chosen for her own entertainment. Yet it had been her constant companion in these last five months. It had been a favourite with André-Louis; and she read what he had so often read, merely so that she might turn her mind into channels in which his own had flowed. Thus she sought the fond delusion of a spiritual communion.
But tonight the words she had read remained meaningless. Loneliness weighed too heavily upon her. To dispel it, at last, towards ten o'clock came the Regent.
He entered quietly and unheralded. He had been a frequent visitor in this unconventional manner, coming upon her at all hours of the day in the last three months.
Softly he closed the door, and from the threshold stood observing her. He had removed his round hat; but he was still heavily cloaked, and his shoulders were lightly powdered with snow.
From the street below at that moment rose the hoarse voice of the night watchmen calling the hour of ten. Rising slowly to receive him, that call prompted the form of her greeting.
'It is late for your Highness to be abroad.'
A smile softened the stare of the prominent eyes. 'Late or early, my dear Aline, I exist to serve you.' He loosened his cloak, slipped it from his shoulders, and moved forward to fling it across a chair. Then the heavy, paunchy figure marched upon her with its lilting strut. He came to a halt very close to her upon the hearth, and mechanically spread one of his podgy white hands to the blaze; for the solicitudinous landlord had lately made up the fire.
He considered her in silence. He seemed tongue-tied, and an odd nervousness, an indefinable apprehension, began to creep upon her.
'It is late,' she said again. 'I was about to retire. I am none so well tonight, and very weary.'
'Ay, you are pale. My poor child! You will be lonely, too. It was this decided me to seek you, despite the hour. I feel myself to blame.' He sighed. 'But, child, necessity knows no laws. I had to send to Condé, and there was none left at hand but your uncle whom I could employ.'
'My uncle, Monseigneur, was very willing. We are dutiful. Your Highness has no ground for self-reproach.'
'Not unless you have reproaches for me.'
'I, Monseigneur? If I have a reproach for you it is for having given yourself concern on my behalf. You should not have troubled to seek me so late. And it is snowing. You should not have come.'
'Not come? Knowing you lonely here?' Very gently, yet with an odd ardour he complained. 'How far you still are from understanding me, Aline!' He took her hands. 'You are cold. And how pale!' He lowered his eyes from her face to continue his survey of her. She wore a taffeta gown of apple green cut low in the bodice as the mode had prescribed when it was made. 'I vow your cheeks put your breast to shame for whiteness.'
For this, it seemed, he could have found no better medicine than his words. A flush overspread her pallid face, and gently she sought to disengage her hands. But he maintained his grip.
'Why, child, will you be afraid of me? This is unkind. And I have been so patient. So patient that I scarcely know myself.'
'Patient?' There was a kindling in her eyes, a frown between them. All timidity left her, to be replaced by dignity. 'Monseigneur, it grows late. I am here alone. I am sensible of your interest. But you do me too much honour.'
'Not half the honour I desire to do you. Aline, why will you be cruel? Why will you be indifferent to my suffering? Does this soft white bosom hold a heart of stone? Or is it that you do not trust me? They have told you that I am fickle. They malign me, Aline. Or else, if I have been fickle, it is yours to cure me of that. I could be constant to you, child. Constant as the stars.'
He loosed one of her hands, to set his ponderous arm about her shoulders. He sought to draw her to him. But found in her an unsuspected strength which the soft, flabby fellow could not subdue.
'Monseigneur, this is not worthy!' She wrenched herself free, and stood straight and tense before him, her head high. He watched the play of the candle-light in her hair of gold, the ebb and flow of colour in her delicate cheeks, the curve of her lovely throat, and became exasperated by her unreasonableness. Was he not a Prince of the Blood? Who, after all, was she? The daughter of a rustic Breton nobleman, the child of a house of no account; yet she fronted him with the airs of a duchess. Worse. For there was no duchess in France, he was convinced, who would have offered such cold reserves to his wooing. Of all the Princes of the Blood he stood nearest to the throne and was likely to be King one day. Did she overlook this in her silly prudishness? Was she insensible to the honour which he did her, to the honours which might be hers?
But he gave utterance to none of these unanswerable arguments. There was a cold, rustic virtue here that was not to be melted by them. In his anger, his passion was in danger of transmutation. Indeed, it stood delicately poised upon the borderline. He was moved almost to a desire to hurt her. Obeying it, he might have taken a short way with the little fool; but he loathed all violent action. He was too over-burdened with flesh and too scant of breath; and from the manner in which she had disengaged herself from his grasp, he actually doubted if