SCARCELY had Gabrielle left the terrace before Lucette’s wheel stopped and she began to think instead of work. Little frowns and smiles chased each other alternately across her dark expressive face, and here even pearly teeth showed ever and again between the full, mobile lips.
“Has the day’s adventure changed everything?” she mused. “He seems to have been very handsome, this gallant cavalier. I wonder. It would be a hard fight. I know how her pride can stand like a fortress; and I know how love can pull and pull and pull. Don’t I know it?” and she smiled and sighed in turn. “Poor Gabrielle! What a struggle! Heart whispers, ‘I love him’; pride answers, ‘My pledge is given.’ Ah me! he will have to be a manly man, as she says, if he will win her. But she will have a traitor in the fortress after all, if she really love him. Ah me! I know how it would end with me. But Gabrielle—well, she is Gabrielle.”
At that moment a frown chased away the smiles, for Master Dauban, the man she had dubbed a snake, came out from the Maison and approached her.
He was one of those creatures on whom nature sets the outward marks of his inward character. His whole appearance and manner suggested slyness and secretiveness. His light brown shifty eyes were deep set in his sallow face, his cheeks smooth and round, and his lips thin and straight; while his voice, unctuous and oily, and his glances, always quick and restlessly furtive, no less than the fawning gestures of his hands and his soft tread proclaimed him a born spy. At least so Lucette thought, and she hated him accordingly, as she hated all things mean and base.
But his feeling for her was very far removed from hatred, and as he came up now his glance was full of admiration.
“I am the happiest of men to find you alone, Mistress Lucette.”
“I am not the happiest of women to find you anywhere—near me, Master Dauban,” she retorted.
“You are as cruel to me as you are beautiful.”
“And you are as handsome as you are honest,” she cried with a shrug. He winced.
“Why do you always wrong me so?”
“In calling you honest, you mean?”
“You are in truth a sweet rose, Mistress Lucette, but the thorns of your wit are sharp and draw blood.”
“They are meant to prevent snails and slugs from crawling too near me, Master Dauban.”
“I take all you say in good part.”
“In ‘good part.’ And what good part is there in you, I pray? I have never seen it.”
“I can be a firm friend.”
“To yourself, maybe.”
“And an ugly enemy, too, at times.”
Lucette looked him up and down, and her lip curled as she answered with almost savage contempt—
“Who has fallen so low as to fear you, Master Dauban? Have you been trounced by some scullion of the kitchen? You should beware how you offend any one with hands to strike with.”
“It is easy to scoff, mistress,” he returned sullenly, stung by her words.
“Aye, truly, where you are the object. If you do not like the truth, go away; you came of your own will and do not stay by mine. In truth, Malincourt would be none the worse for your going altogether.”
“I have a strong reason for wishing to stay. You are the reason,” he said, shooting a glance at her. “Why won’t you let me be your friend?”
“There is but one act of friendship you could show to me.”
“What is it?” he asked eagerly. “Try me; try me.”
“Put a hundred leagues between us and never lessen the distance. It would indeed be an act of true friendship if you would never let my eyes rest on your face again.”
“That is a hard saying. I could not live apart from you,” he declared with much earnestness.
“I see no reason in that why you should not go away,” she laughed. “The world could manage to exist without you; although your master might miss you.”
He looked at her cunningly.
“You do not like my master, I fear, Mistress Lucette.”
“Ah, has he set you to find out what I think of him?”
“I could tell you things,” he said slyly, lowering his tone and glancing about him.
She paused a moment and her eyes questioned him. She checked the mocking reply which was on her lips, and asked, as if with an assumed indifference, covering real curiosity—
“What could you tell me?”
“I have eyes to see, ears to hear, and I know what I know of his plans—and you would like to know, too.”
Lucette started and bent her head over her wheel that her face might not be seen by his ferrety eyes. She resolved to get it from him.
“Bah! Am I a fool, Master Dauban, that you would fill my ears with lies about a good man? You say truly, the Baron de Proballe is in no favour of mine, but at least I know him to be an honest, fair-speaking, straight-dealing gentleman.”
The man laughed unctuously, as from the enjoyable vantage point of superior knowledge.
“I know what I know,” he said cunningly.
“You know no ill of him, and I will hear none. He is Mademoiselle Gabrielle’s uncle and protecting friend, and a good man.” Lucette’s tone was full of reproachful indignation.
“Yes, he is miladi’s uncle, and a good man.” He laughed again with the same unctuous suggestion of intense enjoyment. “And all you people here in Malincourt are so sharp and clever—so sharp and clever—as clever as he is good.”
“We are sharp enough to know an honest man when we see him, and clever enough not to listen to the tales of a maligner, Master Dauban,” retorted Lucette with an appearance of great warmth. Her anger so delighted the man that he threw himself into the seat near her and laughed till his sides shook.
“What fools women are!”
“They are a match for a man’s brilliant wits any time,” cried Lucette very sharply. “Go away and leave me in peace.”
“A match for us! ho, ho! a match,” he laughed. Presently he grew serious, leaned forward and said in a lone tone: “You love miladi; you think my master a good man, eh? What would you give to know what I know?”
“I wouldn’t know all the wickedness you know for a duke’s ransom,” declared Lucette sharply. “I should have to hang myself if I did, in sheer self-shame.”
“Pouf! women are worse than men; and you’re no better than the rest, I’d be sworn. But you’re such a pretty spitfire and say such waspish things; that’s what I like in you. But for all your sharp tongue you are as blind as a three-day kitten, and can’t tell milk from vinegar when it’s under your very nose. You can’t even smell it;” and he laughed again.
“Better a blind kitten than a wideawake rat with a keen scent for garbage, Master Dauban,” she retorted with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Rats can find other things than garbage, Mistress Lucette. Shall I ask you a question?” He paused, and then with an accent of great cunning, asked—“Why do you think my good master is so interested in this marriage of miladi with M. de Cobalt?”
Lucette laughed airily.
“That’s easy to answer, of a surety. Because he is the brother of Mistress Gabrielle’s late mother, and it is a family affair.”
“There mewed the blind kitten,” he cried with another of his triumphant laughs.
“And there squeaked a rat!”
“Does a good man like to see his niece, a pure woman, mated with a scoundrel? Does he work and scheme and strive and plot to force it on? Answer me that, kitten.”
“Does even a rat seek to bite the hand that feeds it? Answer me that, rat.”
“Feeds it? Out on such feeding,” he cried with sudden malevolence. “Uses it, fools it, kicks it, and throws a few husks to it, keeping all the grain for himself. I know what I know, I tell you. And you should know it too if you—but never mind. Go on with your mewing, and when your gay gallant comes, set him on another pedestal as high as my noble master’s and fawn on him.”
“What grudge have you against M. de Cobalt that you would set us against him?”
“Grudge? I have no grudge. I have never even set eyes on him. But I know what I know. And when your eyes get opened, remember to-day.”
“And why should a rat squeak against a man he has never seen?”
But he was quick to discern the earnestness which Lucette allowed to appear in her tone; and he got up and smiled cunningly.
“I am not a well to be emptied by a woman’s bucket, Mistress Lucette. You will see, some day.”
“I don’t believe a word you’ve said,” she replied with a shrug of indifference.
“I could say much more if——” he paused.
“If what?”
He leered at her cunningly, and bending down close to her shoulder, whispered—
“If you’d give me such a kiss as I saw you give Antoine de Cavannes in the wood yonder when Denys St. Jean was at Courtal. ‘Splay-footed Antoine,’ as you called him to-day.”
Lucette flushed with anger and vexation, genuine enough now, and a passionate retort rose to her lips, but did not pass them. She had to fight down her anger in a pause which he mistook for confusion.
“You have indeed both eyes and ears, Master Dauban,” she answered with a quick glance of coquetry. “But you will not tell on me?” she added, as if in dismay and fear of him.
“I may,” he replied, enjoying her fear.
“You must not. You must not.” Her accents were those of quick alarm.
“Do you love either of them?”
“A poor girl must have friends.”
“Yet you would drive me away.”
“Ah, Master Dauban, do you believe all a poor girl says?” and she sighed and cast a languishing look on him.
“You hate me and wish never to see me again. You said so.”
“Must every maiden wear her heart on her sleeve, Master Dauban, for you handsome gallants to trifle with?”
“My name is Jacques, by your leave.”
“’Tis the sweetest of names;” and Lucette sighed and looked down; then started and dashed a look at him and cried as if in distress—“Go away, Master Dauban. You make me so—oh, I don’t know how to say it. I feel—oh, do go away. You make me feel so serious and so—so sad. Ah me!”
“You say those things to Denys and Antoine—and others.”
For answer Lucette fixed her eyes upon him reproachfully and then sighed again; and her eyes could speak in a language few men could read unmoved.
“I knew you were cruel, but—oh, do leave me.”
His hand sought hers. She let him take it and returned the pressure of his fingers, which trembled.
“You have never met me in the wood, Lucette,” he whispered.
“You have never asked me, Jacques. I never thought——” and she faltered and broke down.
“Be there at set of sun this evening.”
“No, no, I could not; I dare not. I could never do that—but I often walk there—Jacques.”
“And this evening?” He was trembling again in his eagerness.
Her eyes said yes, the pressure of her tell-tale fingers confirmed it, and the sigh she gave sent him into an ecstasy.
“I believe you do but play with poor me,” she whispered.
“I swear on my soul I am in earnest. I love you, Lucette, I——”
“Hush, not now, not now;” and she snatched her hand quickly from him as if in great confusion and picked up her spinning wheel. “I shall count the minutes till the sun sets—now, Jacques,” she cried with a bright laughing smile, and passed into the house.
“Blind kittens are we, Master Rat?” she said to herself as she went to her apartment. “If I do not know all you have to tell me of this villainy against Gabrielle before the dusk is dark, may I never know a rogue when I see one.” And then her fears on Gabrielle’s account having been excited, her quick wits busied themselves with all manner of fanciful conjectures as to what the vaguely shadowed danger could be; and her impatience could scarce be held in check until the time arrived for her meeting with Dauban.
Meanwhile the interview between Gabrielle and her uncle had taken place and he had brought her news which for the moment had both deeply interested and greatly excited her.
The Baron de Proballe was a man whose aim in life had been to fill to the brim the cup of self-indulgent pleasures. Handsome, rich, unscrupulous and talented, he was endowed with most of the vices except cowardice, and while yet a young man he had soon made himself a reputation as a profligate among profligates until his excesses had ruined him. His fortune declined as his reputation grew, and for some years he had been driven to live upon his wits, which meant trading upon his skill as a gambler until a particularly disgraceful scandal had driven him from Paris, bankrupt in pocket and much broken in health, to seek refuge with his young kinswoman at Morvaix.
There his evil fame was unknown, and Gabrielle had welcomed him for her dead mother’s sake; and in the small provincial city he had passed two hateful years, brooding upon the pleasures which were now denied to him and devising means to rehabilitate his shattered fortunes and recover some of his lost health.
Outwardly he had hitherto shown himself a model of a courteous gentleman and had lived almost an exemplary life in Morvaix, having put away from him with iron firmness the dissolute habits and evil practices of the old life in Paris. The desire for them burnt as strongly as ever in his blood, and his sole object in resisting it so strenuously was the hope of regaining such health, fortune and position as would enable him once more to indulge them freely.
But there was a flaw in his plans which threatened to ruin everything. He had ingratiated himself with the Governor, and the Duke, as keen a gambler as de Proballe himself, had won very heavy sums of money which could not be paid; and he had in this way obtained a hold over him which threatened to have critical consequences to all concerned.
The Duke had acted with deliberate intention. A man of reckless life and licentious nature, he had been fascinated by Gabrielle de Malincourt’s beauty, and he had formed a scheme in regard to her which made her uncle’s assistance of the utmost value and consequence.
De Proballe himself, despite his evil past and seared conscience, had at first refused indignantly to have any hand in the vile matter; but the Governor, never nice in his methods, had found means to over-ride this opposition; and then de Proballe sought to justify his act to himself by forming a counter-scheme against the Governor.
To further the plan, Gabrielle’s uncle had concocted the story and fabricated the proofs supporting it, of her parents’ wish that she should marry a distant kinsman, Gerard de Cobalt, a young reprobate whose life had been if anything more disgraceful than that of de Proballe himself. His culminating act of villainy had been the treacherous murder of a friend at Cambrai, a town within the Governor’s province, and for this he was a fugitive from justice. De Cobalt’s reward for his part in the infamous scheme was to be a pardon for the affair at Cambrai; and he was to come to Morvaix and marry Gabrielle to provide a complacent cloak for the Governor’s scheme.
Gabrielle, suspecting nothing of the intrigue which was in progress about her, and deceived by her uncle’s consistently considerate and courteous demeanour to herself, had grown both to trust and like him, and met him now with a smile.
He noticed her disquiet and remarked on her troubled looks.
“It was the scene in the market place,” she said, and told him what had occurred.
“I was there and saw it all, Gabrielle. I fear Babillon brought it upon himself. We live in troubled times, child, and authority must be maintained. The Duke is hasty in temper, and he thought, I am sure, as did I and others, that the smith meant to attack him. It is only in the first moments of an outbreak that it can be quelled; had this gone further much more blood than the smith’s would have been shed. Remember that.”
“He was but protesting,” said Gabrielle.
“He nearly killed two of the soldiery with his protest, child.”
“Not until they were ordered to attack him.”
“Who raises his hand in violence must look for violence in return. I am not defending the act. Had I been Governor I would have listened first and punished afterwards, but that is not de Rochelle’s method.”
“It was a foul murder, and I care not who hears me say it,” exclaimed Gabrielle vehemently. “And this infamous tax caused it.”
“It is about that I have news for you. The Duke is considering your request to him and will wait upon you here at Malincourt, to-morrow. He is a staunch friend to you, Gabrielle, and your lightest word has weight with him.”
“He should need no one’s word to induce him to do justly,” she said. “He grinds the face of the people with his hideous tyranny.”
“You have this influence with him and can best use it in the people’s cause. That is a great thought for you to ponder. You will not do best for them by incensing it, but rather by leading him to see these things as you see them.” He watched her very closely as he said this in his gentlest and most persuasive tone.
“But I despise him,” she said with a shudder. “I loathe him, indeed.”
“In this world we cannot choose the means we would, but must use those which lie to our hands. Yours is a heavy load of responsibility for such young shoulders to bear, my child. The head of a great house, alone with none to advise save an unworthy old man who has wearied of the affairs of the world, and with the cares of an army of suffering people to plague and oppress you. Let us hope that your marriage will prove the relief it should. Gerard de Cobalt should be here to-day or to-morrow. Pray Heaven he carries a steady head on worthy shoulders—as indeed I hear he does.”
Gabrielle sighed and lifted and let fall her hand; a half-despairing gesture suggestive of her distracted thoughts.
“You should be all smiles, Gabrielle. My dear sister, your mother, and your father, too, built so much upon this marriage. The Governor also is profoundly interested in it, and will welcome your husband and give him an honoured place in his favour and esteem. You two are destined to do great things for Morvaix.”
“Please God it may be so,” returned Gabrielle earnestly. “But to take a husband I have never seen is——” The sentence ended in another gesture as hopeless as the first.
“I have made many searching inquiries concerning him, Gabrielle. A handsome gallant and as brave and fearless as comely.”
“It may be for the best,” she said lifelessly.
“It must and will be for the best,” he returned. “To-morrow you will hear from the Duke how he proposes to honour the man of your choice.”
“Choice?” echoed Gabrielle, catching at the word.
“Yes, choice; what else? Whom else in Morvaix would you choose? You would not choose to disobey your dear mother’s last earthly wish. And the obligations of a girl placed as you are at the head of a house such as ours might well have compelled a marriage with a far less welcome groom. I could tell you of scores of such ill-fated unions. Keep a light heart, child; for you may face the future fearlessly—a brilliant future too.”
“I am foolish and rebellious at times, I know. But I am not unmindful of my duty to my house,” she said proudly.
“Spoken like a Malincourt; like my sainted sister’s own child. Keep that face for the Governor to-morrow, Gabrielle. Smile to him and upon him, and the rule of Morvaix and all in it will be inspired by your gentle heart.”
And with that thought he deemed it judicious to end the interview.