The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
your love, Aline.'
'Ah, but you must not! You must not! Oh, this is madness!'
She struggled within the coil of his arm. But it was a feeble, protesting struggle, very different from that masterful wrench with which earlier she had disengaged herself. 'Do you mean that you will not go to Toulon?' There was a horror in her voice as she asked the question.
'That is what I mean, at need. It is in your hands, Aline.'
'How in my hands? How in my hands? What are you saying? Why will you put this thing—this dreadful thing—upon me?'
'To afford you the proof you need.'
'I need no proof. You owe me no proof of anything. There is nothing between us to be proved. Nothing. Let me go, Monseigneur! Ah, let me go!'
'Why, so I will, if you insist.' But he held her firmly to him. His face was within an inch or two of her own, so white and piteous, so distractingly lovely. 'But first hear me, and understand me. I will not go to Toulon—I take oath here that I will not go—that I will not leave Hamm—unless I have assurance of your love, unless I have proof of it, my Aline; proof of it, do you understand?'
As he ended, his right arm went round her to reënforce his left, he drew her closer still against him, and his lips descended upon hers and held them.
Under that kiss she shivered, and thereafter lay limp in his embrace. Thus for a few heartbeats she suffered him to hold her, and in that time her thoughts travelled far down the past and far into the future, for thought knows naught of time and is not to be held within its narrow confines. André-Louis, her lover, the man for whom she would have kept herself, and to keep herself for whom none could ever have robbed her of her strength, had been dead these six months. She had mourned him, and she had entered into the resignation without which life on earth would be unbearable to so many. But something had gone from her which had left her without definite orientation. What did she matter now? To whom could she matter ever again? If this gross Prince desired her; if his desire of her pushed him to such mad lengths that, unless he had his way, he would betray those of her class and blood who depended upon him, then, for their sake, for the sake of her loyalties, for the sake of all that she had been reared to reverence, let her sacrifice herself.
Thus, in some nebulous way, during that dreadful moment of his embrace, did her thoughts travel. And then she grew conscious of a sound behind and beyond him. For a moment thereafter his arms continued to enfold her, his lips still pressed her own which were so cold and unresponsive, suffering him in such deadly indifference to have his will upon them. Then he, too, became aware of that movement. He broke away from her abruptly, and turned.
The door had opened, and on the threshold two gentlemen stood at gaze. They were the Comte d'Entragues and the Marquis de la Guiche. The Count's mobile countenance wore a faint, cynical smile of complete understanding. The Marquis, spurred and booted and splashed from travelling, looked on with a black scowl on his hawk-face. And it was he who spoke, his voice harsh and rasping, void of all the deference in which royalty is to be addressed.
'We interrupt you, Monseigneur. But it is necessary. The matter is urgent, and cannot wait.'
The Regent, at a disadvantage, sought to array himself in frosty dignity. But in such an emergency his figure did not assist the operation. He achieved pompousness.
'What is this, messieurs? How dare you break in upon me?'
D'Entragues presented his companion and his explanations in a breath. 'This is Monsieur le Marquis de la Guiche, Monseigneur. He has just arrived in Hamm. He is from Toulon with urgent messages.'
He might have said more, but the furious Regent gave him no time.
'There is no urgency can warrant such an intrusion when I am private. Am I become of no account?'
It was the Marquis de la Guiche who answered him, his voice stingingly incisive. 'I begin to think so, Monseigneur.'
'What's that?' The Regent could not believe that he heard correctly. 'What did you say?'
La Guiche, dominant, masterful, his face wicked with anger, ignored the question.
'The matter that brings me cannot wait.'
The Regent, in increasing unbelief, looked down his nose at him. 'You are insolent. You do not know your place. You will wait upon my convenience, sir.'
But the other's voice, growing more harshly vibrant, flung back at him: 'I wait upon the convenience of the royalist cause, Monseigneur. Its fate is in the balance, and delays may wreck it. That is why I insisted with Monsieur d'Entragues that he should bring me to you instantly, wherever you might be.' And without more, contemptuous, peremptory, he added the question: 'Will you hear me here, or will you come with us?'
The Regent gave him a long arrogant stare, before which the other's intrepid glance never wavered. Then his Highness waved him out with one of his plump white hands.
'Go, sir. I follow.'
De la Guiche bowed stiffly and went, d'Entragues accompanying him and closing the door.
The Regent, white and trembling, turned again to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. There was a black rage in his heart. But he mastered it to speak to her.
'I will return presently, child,' he promised her. Presently.'
He took his strutting way to the door, leaving his cloak where it lay.
Dazed with fear and shame, for she had read the thoughts of La Guiche as if they had been printed on his face, she watched Monsieur depart. She stood, with one hand clutching at her heaving bosom until his footsteps, accompanied by those of his two companions, had faded on the stairs. Then she spun round, went down on her knees by a chair, and, burying her face in her hands, lay there convulsed by sobs.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE CANDID MARQUIS
Monsieur was trembling from head to foot when he stepped out of that room on the first floor of the Bear Inn. He was at once racked by chagrin at the inopportuneness of the interruption and swept by anger at the manner of it.
On the gallery he found the two gentlemen awaiting him. D'Entragues lounged against the rail. La Guiche stood tense. He, too, was trembling. But it was with anger only. Hot-tempered, downright, this intrepid soldier, with his contempt of courts, was the bearer of a message of some peremptoriness which he did not now intend to soften.
In the moment of waiting for the Regent to follow them, the Marquis had looked with flaming eyes at d'Entragues.
'So it is true, then!' he had said in deepest bitterness.
D'Entragues had shrugged, cynical ever, in words as in smile.
'What is there to grow hot about?'
La Guiche's glance of contempt had been as a blow. Beyond that he made no answer. He disdained to waste words on this fribble. He would save what he had to say for the Prince.
And now the Prince stood before them, his big face white, his glance one of haughty annoyance.
In the common-room, which the gallery overlooked, some townsfolk sat over their cards and backgammon. The interview could not take place here within public earshot. This Monsieur at once perceived, despite his disordered condition.
'Follow me,' he commanded, and led the way down the stairs.
The landlord ushered them presently into a little room on the ground-floor, lighted candles from the taper which he carried, and left them.
And now the Regent, shaking himself like a turkey-cock and puffing out his chest, prepared to loose upon them his displeasure.
'It seems that I am come so low that even my privacy is to be invaded; that there are even gentlemen of birth so indifferent to the respect that is due to my person as not