CHAPTER XII
GABRIELLE’S FRIEND
THE Duke carried away from Malincourt a heart bitter with jealousy and black with anger, and he vented his passion upon de Proballe, whom he chose to regard as the cause of all the trouble.
“You have betrayed my confidence shamefully. You have doubtless your own ends to gain, as that letter hinted; but they will cost you dear, whatever they are, monsieur.”
“Betrayed you? How?” asked de Proballe, exceedingly uneasy as he thought his ulterior plans might be suspected. “What have I done other than as we agreed?”
“Did we agree that this scoundrel was so to arrange the manner of his coming as to impress your niece in this way? Was he to flaunt himself as a man of spirit and courage and impose thus on a young, impressionable, high-minded girl?”
“Did I order the manner of his coming? You wrong me entirely. His secret coming was as much a surprise to me as an offence to you; and that he was able to make this impression on Gabrielle was not my doing but the blundering of your own men. Your soldiers first in the market place; your followers, de Cavannes and d’Estelle, afterwards in their attack upon Denys in Gabrielle’s very presence when Gerard was at hand.”
“Would God they had killed him!” exclaimed the Duke brutally. “But after the affair in the market place you should have told me.”
“Nay, that is an even greater injustice than ever. Who of us even guessed that the man was de Cobalt?” De Proballe’s tone was a good imitation of injured innocence.
“You have betrayed me, I say; and if the thing miscarries you shall suffer,” returned the Governor, in no mood to listen to any reason. “You should have stopped the mischief as soon as you saw it was going so far.”
“It happened but yesterday.”
“God’s Cross! man, what has that to do with it? Is a mischief like this to be counted by hours? Was it ever in our plan that the villain should win your niece’s heart?”
“He had at least to make such an impression as would induce her to consent to marry him. It is but a passing fancy which the proof of his evil character will cure—and his flight will prove it better than aught else.”
“Passing fancy!” exclaimed the Duke bitterly. “Are you blind? I know not when I have so keenly suffered. But if he do not fly, he shall suffer too.”
“He is not fool enough to remain. It was a shrewd thought to give him time to cool and think; and if he have any mind to linger, I will find arguments to drive him away. He has yet to learn your methods of justice here in Morvaix: I can find in them ample reasons for him. Although why you let him go instead of dealing with him at once I do not see.”
“If he flies, his flight will be, as you say, the proof of his guilt.”
“He will fly,” said de Proballe, confidently. “Did he not shun your province as a man would shun hell? Did he not refuse to come without that promise of pardon in writing? By a man’s acts you shall know him, not by his words. Let him think of Gabrielle as he will, he will think more of his own life. But I would have kept him.”
“When his flight has proved his guilt he can be retaken for me to use.”
De Proballe laughed. “You have a mercy of your own, Duke. I had not thought of that. Stay, what if he were to use this interval of your mercy to prevail on Gabrielle to fly with him? He is daredevil enough.”
“She would never stoop to that, surely!”
“Women are women, and when they are in—when a man influences them, I mean, the best will do strange things.”
“Return to Malincourt and watch, de Proballe. Your niece is to come to the Castle two hours after noon. Make this flight impossible after then; and after that I will see to it that no chance offers for her to leave even the Castle itself. If the mad attempt be made, have the scoundrel seized and brought to me.”
De Proballe was by no means sorry to get away from the Governor in his present mood, and returned to Malincourt to keep the watch; while the Governor hurried on to the Castle to take further steps designed to prevent this suggested flight; and some of them were to have important results in another direction.
He despatched a body of soldiers to watch round Malincourt, and at the same time sent urgent commands to the officers of the different gates of the city that no one was to be allowed to pass out without leave signed by him. Thus it came about that the courier whom Pascal was sending to Cambrai was stopped, and valuable time lost.
The Governor, having completed these arrangements, was closeted for an hour with his wife, and as soon as he heard, to his intense relief, that Gabrielle had arrived at the Castle and was with the Duchess, he sent for Dubois to sound him in regard to that part of the plan which called for the aid of the Church.
He was as hot now upon the scheme of divorcing his wife in order to be free to marry again, as he had been formerly upon the other intention.
The ruse by which Gerard had succeeded in getting a hundred of his own soldiers enrolled among the Castle troops, by pretending that they came as a gift from the Cardinal Archbishop, was thus having singular results. The Governor read it as a proof that he stood so well with the Cardinal that he could hope to receive his Eminence’s support in the matter of the divorce; and as he concluded Dubois had been chosen as the Cardinal’s delegate because of the latter’s confidence in him, here was the very man at hand to sound on the matter.
Dubois was a clever soldier and a brave fighter, and had been selected by Gerard for his present task because his influence with the men was most likely to keep them in bounds while in the Castle. He made a very brusque unmonklike monk, however; and he now found himself in a very awkward position. Moreover, he knew nothing of Gerard’s experiences within the last few hours.
He listened quietly to the Duke, and, seeing no connection between the matter and any of Gerard’s affairs, felt no interest in it at all, and gave his own opinion bluntly. He was a soldier, not a cleric; knew little and cared less about the theological views as to the dissolution of a tie cemented by a sacrament of the Church; and the only thought he had about it was that as the Tiger Governor was such a tyrant, it was a blessing and not a curse that he was childless—the point on which with him the Duke laid the chief stress.
“His Eminence would never sanction it, my lord,” he declared brusquely. “It is against the Canon of Holy Church.”
“But it has been sanctioned before now,” replied the Governor, and went on to cite instances and to argue the matter. Dubois had, however, only one reply to everything.
“The Cardinal would never sanction it;” and his dogged insistence upon this began at length to enrage the Governor, not a little to Dubois’ grim amusement.
“I would rather have the countenance of the Church, but in Morvaix I am the head of the Church as of all else. I am wont to act first and inquire afterwards in most things. It is simpler, and the end is the same. This may be such a case. If I should seek your help as the Cardinal’s representative you would give it?”
“It is none of my affair,” replied Dubois hastily.
“I repeat my question;” and the Governor looked at him meaningly. But Dubois was the last man in the world to be browbeaten; and thus he answered stolidly:
“And I repeat my answer, my lord.”
“I am not wont to be set at defiance by monk or priest.”
“Nor I to be driven from my duty, my lord. I am not setting you at defiance.”
“My priests in Morvaix do not answer me thus.”
“I am not your lordship’s priest.”
“You will at least keep silence about what has passed between us.”
“Unless my duty demand that I should speak of it.”
“What is that but threatening me and defying me?” The Governor’s anger was mounting fast in view of what he deemed the monk’s contumacy, and Dubois was no less dogged and blunt.
“If what you propose to do be right, what need is there for silence; if it be wrong, why should my lips be sealed?” he answered.
“Secrets confided to the ears of you holy men are to be regarded as sacred.”
“This is no such occasion. You sought my opinion and I gave it. That is all. My duty is my duty, none the less or more.”
“Peace with your canting about duty. You are in Morvaix now, and I will settle what is your duty. I rule here, absolutely.”
“I am not disputing your rule, my lord; but I was not sent here to do your bidding or to cease to do what I deem my duty.”
“Out of my sight. It is such canting hypocrites as you who sow discord and do mischief. See to it that you hold your babbling tongue, or I’ll find means to silence you.” But Dubois fired at this injustice and answered hotly—
“I am no canting hypocrite, my lord, nor am I a recreant coward to flinch and cringe before your angry looks and passionate words. They do but convince me that in this thing you have some evil purpose; and not in Morvaix, no, nor in all France, is there power to silence me if I think I ought to speak.”
“Out of my presence before I send for my guards to drive you away for a pestilent ribald malcontent.”
“I came of your seeking, not of my own wish,” returned Dubois, not one whit abashed by the Governor’s violence.
“If I have cause to send for you again you will repent it.”
“I am in no ways persuaded of that,” returned Dubois, sturdily; and he swung out of the room, little thinking that he had done harm to Gerard by his manful attitude. Yet in a way he had; for the Governor, revolving what had passed, determined not to take the risk of applying to the Cardinal, but to hurry on his marriage, and leave the Church to interfere when it would have the accomplished fact to face.
Had Dubois but known, he would have been more prudent to have appeared to consent to the Governor’s plans and to have held out to him the hope of the Cardinal’s consent, so that he might have been induced to incur the delay necessary to obtain it. He saw this when Gerard pointed it out to him later. But it was too late then.
In the meantime the Duchess had received Gabrielle with even greater tenderness and love than usual; and it was some time before she began to work round slowly to the subject of the Duke’s wishes.
“I am old, feeble, and bed-ridden, Gabrielle, and worse than all, childless. I am done with the world, dear, and willing to give place to one who can play my part better. It would have been better, far better, had I died years ago.”
“Then I should have lacked the truest woman friend a girl could have,” answered Gabrielle sweetly. “But you must not yield to this melancholy. You have been in greater pain than usual, I fear, and it has tried you.”
“Not of body, child, but of mind, perhaps,” and she sighed. “It is ill to lag on and on, a weary dreary nuisance to all around you. There comes a time when it is good to die.”
“You are morbid. Something has distressed you. Tell me,” and Gabrielle sat on the bedside and took her friend’s hand.
“I have been a failure, child. I see it now; and see how the people under the Duke’s rule have suffered in consequence. The Duke himself has shown me this.”
“The Duke?” exclaimed Gabrielle in surprise.
“The influence of a woman’s hand in his governing has been sadly missed. He loved me once, child, and then I could sway him, hard though he now seems. But when I bore him no children and my helplessness fell on me, an estrangement grew between us and from that followed, oh, so many evils.” She sighed deeply, and paused before she added: “Yet he has shown me it is not too late, even now.”
“I cannot follow you now, dear,” said Gabrielle.
“A noble without a son to succeed him lacks one of the great incentives to do right, Gabrielle. He turns his thoughts inwards, broods, thinks only of himself, and grows the harder for the galling grief and disappointment. It has been so with the Duke. If I had but died years ago, when first my calamity struck me down, he would have taken another wife who would have borne him children. Would God indeed that I had died!”
Gabrielle said nothing. Deep down in her mind the thought began to take shape that there was some purpose behind her friend’s words—some new cause to bring this side of her sufferings to the light just now.
“I used to pray so earnestly for a son,” the Duchess continued, after a painful pause; “but none came; and I was thus so unneeded, so less than useless; a clog, a drag, a dead weight in his life. I could not wonder he grew cold, and that in time the coldness hardened into cruelty. I stood for no more than the disappointment in his life.” She spoke in a slow, leaden, hopeless, melancholy tone, infinitely touching to Gabrielle. “It is a dreary fate for a wife, child, to stir no other feeling in her husband’s heart than that of disappointment and to see it hardening slowly into hate. Had I but dared at that time I would have taken my life. But I was a coward. I dared not find freedom in that way.”
“Did the Duke know of these thoughts?” asked Gabrielle, keeping her face averted.
“Whether he could read mine as I could read his, I know not. I saw him only rarely. This has been so for many years indeed. That he should speak often of our childlessness, should even taunt me with it, was perhaps no more than natural—and yet every word was like a sword-thrust in my heart. More than once I made him a proposal.”
“Yes?”
“It was my own thought,” continued the Duchess, smoothing Gabrielle’s hair and petting her. “Quite my own. You know how the idea of self-sacrifice will sometimes seize upon us women till it becomes almost a desire. It was so with me. I knew it would be so well for Morvaix if he could have some one by his side, heart-warm in the desire to help the people, strong in influence to modify the ever growing sternness of his rule by gentle suasive counsel—he is at heart a man amenable to such influence, Gabrielle—and able to take a due part in the work of government: a helpmeet in all ways. So I urged him to gain the sanction of Holy Church to dissolve our marriage, on the ground of our childlessness, and seek—another and a better wife.”
“My dear, my dear,” cried Gabrielle, intensely moved. “Where could he find a better in all fair France than you? He refused you, of course.”
“Yes—then; and not kindly, but with a gibe—that he had not found marriage an experience he wished to double. It wounded me of course to have what I meant in all sincerity to be a help to him thus turned to jeering; but he did not understand my motive, I think. But now he has gone back to the plan; for there is one, a woman among women, Gabrielle, who would be all that Morvaix could desire as his wife. And the one of all others whom I could best bear to see filling my place.”
She paused for Gabrielle to speak; but no response came.
“Her heart, like mine, is for the people’s weal and her influence would be far greater than mine could ever have been with the citizens; real, powerful, active, where mine is now dead. You have often told me how you love the people, Gabrielle.”
“You must say no more,” answered Gabrielle, in a low firm voice. “I will not affect to misunderstand you, and I know you speak in all purity of thought and intent. But were all other considerations naught, I would never do you this wrong.”
“He and all would honour you if you were his wife, Gabrielle.”
“Nay, I should dishonour myself. I beg you say no more.”
“You would be all-powerful to rule in Morvaix.”
“Were the throne of France the guerdon I would not consent.”
“Your heart is free, child?” The gentle eyes were full on Gabrielle’s face as the question was put, and the light that rushed to it did not escape them. “Gabrielle, my Gabrielle, I did not know;” and at that Gabrielle lowered her head and hid it on her friend’s heart. “Pray heaven he is worthy of you. Tell me, child. Or is it a secret?”
“No secret,” said Gabrielle, lifting her head proudly. “My cousin, Gerard de Cobalt——”
“Gabrielle, not he, surely not he, I trust,” interposed the Duchess, in a tone of dismay. “Oh, how I am punished for not having spoken my fears. Since last we spoke together of him and his coming, I have heard ill tidings indeed concerning him, but put off speaking to warn you until I could be certain. He is not worthy of you, child; far, far from it.”
“You have not seen him and spoken with him, or you would not say that.”
“When did he come?”
“But yesterday; or rather, two days past;” and Gabrielle told of the meeting in the market place and after at Malincourt.
“It is a tragedy,” was the Duchess’s comment. “And you love him! Oh, Gabrielle, Gabrielle, what sorrow is there not in store for you!”
“Not through him,” was the confident reply.
“Alas! child, what do you know of men who judge them by a comely face and a fair-speaking tongue? When could a man not speak a maiden fairly? Have they not told you of his evil life? Of the crime for which he craved the Duke’s pardon fore ever he set foot in the city?”
“My heart is closed to the voice of slander against him, dear,” replied Gabrielle, in the same proud confident tone.
“How like a maiden in love! But alas! my child, I know these things are true. His life is forfeit for the one deed—but one among many in his black life. Oh, Gabrielle, how terrible, how terrible! It will break your life even worse than mine has been broken.”
“I have neither fears for him nor doubts for myself.”
“When the heart is young how easy to be confident. How sad and more than sad is all this! And here, then, is the reason why my words found your ears deaf, is it?”
“Only in part. Had I never seen Gerard, my answer had been the same.”
The Duchess sighed and shivered slightly in fear.
“The Duke will hear your decision unwillingly, Gabrielle; and it will harden his heart against the man who thus comes between you and him. Your cup of suffering will be full indeed even while you are so young. He had built upon this marriage; thinking by it to join the influence of your house of Malincourt with his.”
“I recall now how he spoke of my having some influence in the governing of the city, and of some sacrifice to be made by me. This may have been in his thoughts; and yet almost in the same breath he had spoken of my marriage to my cousin. ’Twas inexplicable to me then, and is even more so now. Yet the thing was not more possible then than now. Did death itself gape full in front of me, I would not be his wife.” There was no mistaking the unalterable firmness of her decision.
“You have an honest heart and soul, Gabrielle, and were I you, and so placed as you, I should decide as you.”
“I told the Duke I was sure what your reply would be when he laid on me the ungrateful task of questioning you. Yet in a way I am sorry; for if it be not you, it may be some one less worthy, to the hurt of all in Morvaix.”
“And if need should come, you will stand by me as to my cousin?”
“Have I ever failed you when I had the power to help? But in this I am powerless. It would be wrong to give you fruitless hope. Were he but a good man, worthy of your sweet pure love, how gladly would I serve you, if serve any one I can in my helplessness.”
Gabrielle smiled. “I will prove him worthy—nay, not I, he himself will prove it to Morvaix and the world; and then I will claim your promise.”
“Nor claim it in vain, Gabrielle; that you know. And now let us speak of less trying matters. I am weary,” said the Duchess, and they were thus engaged when the Governor entered.
Gabrielle rose, and the Duke first cast a sharp questioning glance at his wife’s face—
“I am always glad to find you here, mademoiselle. I trust you have had long enough time to come to an understanding?”
“I have done my utmost, Charles,” said the Duchess, shrinkingly.
“I ask no more. May I beg some words with you, mademoiselle?”
“Except on one subject, certainly,” replied Gabrielle.
“We will discuss the exceptions in private,” he returned with a frown.
“I beg you to excuse me, my lord.”
His answer was characteristic. He opened the door leading to an adjoining room and held it for her to pass out.
“Pardon me my insistence. What I have to say must be in private and cannot wait.”
For a moment Gabrielle rebelled, raising her head proudly and meeting his gaze firmly.
“I repeat, must be in private, mademoiselle,” he said, adding as an afterthought: “And it cannot fail to interest you, seeing whom it concerns.”
She went then and he followed, maintaining silence until they were alone.
“There must be no misunderstanding between us, my lord,” cried Gabrielle, at once throwing down the gauge of defiance. “The Duchess, your wife and my dear friend, has at your instigation made me acquainted with your proposal—a proposal I deem infamous and unholy—and no power you can exert can bring me even to consider it. I pray you spare me the pain of any further reference to it.”
“You are wrong to meet me thus at the outset with antagonism. You have heard as yet but one side only, and must bear with me while I speak of the other. I am far from being your enemy, Heaven knows.”
“While matters remain as they are, I cannot count your lordship among my friends.”
“Those are hard words to hear, mademoiselle. You mean?”
“I mean the slanders you have sanctioned against my cousin and the threats with which you have menaced him. His cause is mine; his enemies are my enemies.”
He made a stern, angry gesture, but held his temper in check.
“The Duchess has told you my wishes—that of her own will and at her own desire our marriage should be dissolved, in order that you may become my wife. But my full motive she could not tell you because she does not know it. It is—that I love you, Gabrielle; love, aye, worship the very ground you tread and the very air you breathe. For me all France holds no——”
“Spare me this added shame, my lord,” Gabrielle broke in, her voice vibrating and her eyes flaming with indignation.
“Shame!” he repeated, with an angry start.
“What is it but shame, the wrong you would do to the purest and sweetest wife man ever had; what else but shame that you should offer to prostrate your government to your own purposes; what but foulest shame that almost within hearing of the woman you would thus wrong you seek to pollute my ears with this infamous profession? If there be a spark of manhood in you, kindle it till it light up your soul sufficiently to save you and me from this unholy degradation.”
“Your passion but whets my love, Gabrielle. I am not a man to be set aside from a purpose once formed. My purpose is now set—you shall be my wife; and neither man nor devil nor God shall turn me.”
“I have but one word, then. I hold your offer to be vile and degrading, and I would rather die than falter for an instant in repudiating it.”
“You will not turn me,” he repeated. “I have offered you my love—a love that burns in me as a consuming fire—and you think to put it aside with indignation and contempt. But there are other emotions fighting for me than love. And fear is one of them.”
“I do not fear your lordship,” flashed Gabrielle, with lofty pride.
“Yet there is none in Morvaix to protect you from me.”
“My cousin Gerard——”
“He has fled the city, like the craven, guilty, worthless wretch he is,” he answered contemptuously.
“It is not true, my lord. He is here in your castle. He came with me, foreseeing more clearly than I the purpose with which you brought me here. He came for my protection. And he is no craven guilty wretch as you say, but a good and true man: the man, my lord, whom I love, and whose wife I shall be, by the grace of God.”
He stood fighting with the tempest of rage which this proud avowal provoked and was still striving for self-restraint, when an interruption occurred. Some one came to the door, and when, with an angry exclamation, he opened it, he found a messenger from de Proballe.
“Your Grace, M. le Baron de Proballe desires me to say that he seeks the favour of an immediate audience with you on matters of the most urgent importance affecting closely M. de Cobalt,” said the man.
“He has not fled, you say?” cried the Duke, turning to Gabrielle, and jumping to the conclusion that that was the news. His manner was full of exultation, and he laughed unpleasantly as he added: “Come and see for yourself.”
Together they went down to where de Proballe was waiting with strange news that had brought him in hot haste to the Castle.
At the sight of her uncle’s face and the triumphant glance he cast at her, Gabrielle felt her heart sink in momentary fear for Gerard; but she rallied quickly and faced them both with a confident smile as she waited for the tidings.