Читать книгу Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century - G. J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 14

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Captain George was not the only soldier of France whom a visit to the Hôtel Montmirail affected that morning with the slighter and premonitory symptoms of fever, such as dry mouth, irregular pulse, and a tendency to flush without physical exertion. While the Musketeer was visiting his outposts in anything but a warlike frame of mind, his former general was working his temper up to a state of nervous irritation more trying than usual to the valets and other domestics of his household. The Prince-Marshal busied himself to-day with preparations for his grand attack, and, contrary to the whole practice of his lifetime, in the event of failure, had made no disposition for retreat.

He felt, indeed, a good deal more agitated now than when he led a forlorn-hope of Black Musketeers at twenty, an exploit from which he came off with three flesh wounds and a broken collar-bone, owing to the usual mistake of too short a scaling-ladder; but he consoled himself by reflecting how this very agitation denoted that the fountain of youth was not yet dried up in his heart.

He rose early, though he could not decently present himself at the Hôtel Montmirail for hours to come. He stormed and swore because his chocolate was not ready, though he hardly tasted it when it was served, and indeed broke his fast on yolk of egg and pounded sugar, mixed up with a small glass of brandy.

This stimulating refreshment enabled him to encounter the fatigue of dressing, and very careful the veteran was to marshal his staunch old forces in their most imposing array.

The few teeth he could boast were polished up white and glistening. Their ranks indeed had been sadly thinned, but, like the last survivors of a beleaguered garrison, though shattered and disordered, they mustered bravely to the front. His wrinkled cheeks and pointed chin were shaved trim and smooth, while the moustaches on his upper lip, though nearly white, were carefully clipped and arranged in the prevailing fashion. More than once during the progress of the toilet, before a mirror which, he cursed repeatedly for a dull and unbecoming glass, his heart misgave him, and he treated his valets to a few camp compliments current amongst the old die-hards of Turenne; but when at last his cravat was fastened—his frills adjusted, his just au corps fitted on, his delicate ruffles pulled over his wasted hands, with their swollen knuckles and magnificent rings, his diamond-hilted rapier hung exactly at his hip, and his laced hat, cocked jauntily à la Mousquetaire, he took one approving survey in the mirror, unbecoming as it was, and marched forth confident and resolved to conquer.

His carriage was waiting for him at the porter’s lodge of his hotel. A nobleman of those days seldom walked afoot in the streets, and it took four horses at least, one coachman, one postilion, and two or three footmen in laced coats, to convey a single biped the distance of a couple of hundred metres.

As the door of his heraldry-covered coach closed on him with a bang, quoth Auguste, who had dressed him, to Etienne, who had handed the clothes and shared impartially in his master’s maledictions—

“Come, that’s not so bad, Etienne! Hein? What would you have at sixty-three? And without me, Bones of St. Martin! what is he? A monkey, a skeleton, a heap of rugs and refuse! Ah! What it is! the toilet!—when a man is really master of his work.”

The Prince-Marshal, you see, like other heroes, was none to his valet de chambre; but Auguste, a true artist, having neglected none of the minutiæ, on which success depended, looked to general results, and exulted in the masterpiece that he felt was a creation of his own genius.

Now it fell out that the Prince de Chateau-Guerrand, hereditary Grand Chasseur to the King, Master of the Horse to the Dauphin, State Exon to the sons and daughters of France, Marshal of its armies, and chevalier of half-a-dozen orders in his own and other countries, with no decoration on earth left to wish for but the Golden Fleece of Spain, which he coveted greedily in consequence, and prized above them all, arrived at the Hôtel Montmirail almost in the moment when Abbé Malletort quitted it at the front entrance, and Captain George of the Grey Musketeers left it by the garden door.

Though the Prince’s chance of victory must have been doubtful at any time, I do not think he could have chosen a more unfavourable moment to deploy into line, as it were, and offer battle in the open field. His fair enemy had already been skirmishing with one foe, and caught sight of another, whom she would willingly have engaged. Her trumpets had sounded the Alerte, her colours were displayed, her artillery was in advance, guns unlimbered, matches lighted, front cleared, all her forces ready and quivering for action—woe to the veteran when he should leave his entrenchments, and sally forth to hazard all his past successes on the rash issue of one stand-up fight!

His instincts told him he was wrong, even while he followed the obsequious lackey, in the Montmirail livery, through the glittering suite of rooms that led him to his fate. Followed, with cold hands and shaking knees, he who had led stormers and commanded armies! Even to himself there was a something of ridicule in the position; and he smiled, as a man smiles who is going to the dentist, while he whispered—“Courage, my child! It is but a quarter of an hour, after all! and yet—I wish I had put that other glass of brandy into my Lait de Poule!”

The Marquise received him more graciously than usual, and this, too, had he known it, was an omen of ill-success. But it is strange how little experience teaches in the campaigns of Cupid, how completely his guerilla style of warfare foils all regular strategy and established system of tactics. I believe any school-girl in her teens to be a match for the most insidious adversary of the opposite sex; and I think that the older the male serpent, and the oftener he has cast his skin, the more easily does his subtlety succumb to the voice of the innocent and unconscious charmer. What chance then had an honest, conceited, thick-headed old soldier, with nothing of the snake about him but his glistening outside, and labouring under the further disadvantage of being furiously in earnest, against such a proficient as the Marquise—a coquette of a dozen years’ standing, rejoicing in battle, accustomed to triumph, witty, scornful, pitiless, and to-day, for the first time, doubtful of her prowess, and dissatisfied with herself?

She had never looked better in her life; the flushed cheeks, the brilliant eyes, the simple white dress, with its scarlet breast-knots, these combined to constitute a very seductive whole, and one that, had there been a mirror in which she could see it reflected, might have gone far to strengthen the Abbé’s arguments, and to convince her that his schemes, aspiring though they seemed, were founded on a knowledge of human nature, experience, and common sense. Neither, I imagine, does a woman ever believe in her heart that any destiny can be quite beyond her reach. Though fortune may offer man something more than his share of goods and tangible possessions on this material earth, nature has conferred on woman the illimitable inheritance of the possible; and no beggar maiden is so lowly but that she may dream of King Cophetua and his crown-matrimonial laid at her shoeless feet.

To see the chance, vague, yet by no means unreasonable, of becoming Queen of France looming in the future—to entertain a preference, vague, yet by no means doubtful, for a handsome captain of Grey Musketeers—and to be made honourable love to at a little past thirty by a man and a marshal a little past sixty—was not all this enough to impart a yet deeper lustre to the glowing cheeks and the bright eyes, to bid the scarlet breast-knots heave and quiver over that warm, wilful, and impassioned heart?

It was not a fair fight; far from it. It was Goliath against David, and David, moreover, with neither stone nor sling, nor ruddy countenance, nor the mettle of untried courage, nor youthful confidence in his cause.

He came up boldly, however, when he confronted his enemy, and kissed her hand with a ponderous compliment to her good looks, which she cut short rudely enough.

Then he took his hat from the floor, and began to smooth its lace against his heavy coat-cuff. She knew it was coming, and though it made her nervous, she rather liked it, notwithstanding.

“Madame!” said the Prince-Marshal, and then he stopped, for his voice sounded so strange he thought he had better begin again.

“Madame, I have for a long period had the honour and advantage of your friendship. Nay, I hope that I have, in all that time, done nothing to forfeit your good opinion?”

She laughed a little unmeaning laugh, and of course avoided a direct answer to the question.

“I always stand up for my friends,” said he, “and yourself, monsieur, amongst the number. It is no light task, I can assure you!”

The veteran had opened fire now, and gained confidence every moment. The first step, the first plunge, the first sentence. It is all the same. Fairly in deep water, a brave man finds his courage come back even faster than it failed him.

“Madame,” he resumed, laying his hat on the floor again, and sitting bolt upright, while his voice, though hoarser than usual, grew very stern, “madame, I am in earnest. Seriously in earnest at present. Listen. I have something of importance to say to you!”

In spite of herself she was a little cowed. “One moment, Prince!” she exclaimed, rising to shut the door and window of her boudoir, as if against listeners. It was a simple feminine manœuvre to gain time; but, looking into the garden, she spied a remnant of the Stephanotis left where George had trodden it, and when she sat down again she was as brave as a lioness once more. Her change of position rather disordered her suitor’s line of battle, and as she had skilfully increased the distance between them, his tactics were still further impeded. In his love affairs the Prince-Marshal’s system had always been to come as soon as possible to close quarters; but it was so long since he had made a regular formal proposal of marriage, that he could not for the life of him remember the precise attitude in which he had advanced. Some vague recollection he entertained, strengthened by what he had seen on the stage, of going down on his knees, but the floor was very slippery, and he was not quite confident about getting up again. It would be ridiculous, he felt, to urge his suit on all-fours, and he knew the Marquise well enough, besides, to be quite sure her paroxysms of laughter in such a difficulty would render her incapable of returning an intelligible answer. Altogether, he decided on sitting still, and though it was obviously a disadvantage, doing his love-making at arm’s length.

“Madame!” he repeated for the fourth time, “I am a soldier; I am a man of few words; I am, I hope, a gentleman, but I am no longer young. I do not dissemble this; I am even past my prime. Frankly, madame, I am getting an old man.”

It was incontestable. She smothered a smile as she mentally conceded the position, but in reply she had nothing to say, and she said it.

The Prince-Marshal, expecting the disclaimer that perhaps politeness demanded, seemed here a little bothered. He had no doubt gone through many rehearsals of the imaginary scene, and it confused him to lose his anticipated cue. Seeking inspiration once more, then, from his hat, he proceeded rather inconsequently. “Therefore it is that I feel emboldened in the present instance to lay before you, madame, the thoughts, the intentions, the wishes, in brief—the anticipations that I had formed of my own future, and to ask your opinion, and, indeed, your advice, or perhaps, I should say, your approval of my plans.”

What a quick ear she had! Far off, upstairs, she heard the door of her daughter’s bedroom shut, and she knew that Cerise, after stopping at every flower-stand in the gallery, would as usual come straight to her mamma’s boudoir. Such a diversion would be invaluable, as it must for the present prevent any decided result from her interview with the Prince-Marshal. She had resolved not to accept him for a husband, we know, and sooner or later, she must come to a definite understanding with her faithful old suitor; but she seemed in this instance strangely given to procrastination, and inclined from time to time to put off the evil day.

Why she did not prefer to have done with it once for all, why she could not wait calmly for his proposal and refuse him with a polite reverence, as she had refused a score of others, it is not for me to explain. Perhaps she would not willingly abdicate a sovereignty that became year by year more precious and more precarious. Perhaps she loved a captive, as a cat loves a mouse, allowing it so much liberty as shall keep it just within reach of the cruel velvet paw. Perhaps she shrunk from any decided step that would force her own heart to confess it was interested elsewhere. A woman’s motives may be countless as the waves on the shore, her intention fathomless as mid-ocean by the deep-sea lead.

Hearing the march of her auxiliaries, she made light of an engagement at closer quarters now. Looking affectionately in the Prince-Marshal’s face, she drew her chair a little nearer, and observed in a low voice—

“I am pretty sure to approve of any plan, my Prince, that conduces to your comfort—to your welfare, nay”—for she heard the rustle of her daughter’s dress, and the lock of the door move—“to your happiness!”

The tone and accompanying glance were irresistible. Any male creature must have fallen a victim on the spot. The Prince-Marshal, sitting opposite the door, dropped his hat, sprang from his chair a yard at a bound, made a pounce at the white hand of the Marquise, and before he could grasp it, stopped midway as if turned to stone, his mouth open, his frame rigid, his very moustaches stiffening, and his eyes staring blankly at the figure of Cerise in the doorway, who, although a good deal discomposed, for she thought to find mamma alone, rose, or rather sank, to the occasion, and bestowed on him the lowest, the most voluminous, and the longest reverence that was ever practised for months together at their pension by the best brought-up young ladies in France. The Prince-Marshal was too good a soldier to neglect such an opportunity for retreat, and retired in good order, flattering himself that though he had suffered severely, it might still be considered a drawn battle with the Marquise.

When he had made his bow with a profusion of compliments to the fresh and beautiful Mademoiselle, whom he wished at a worse place than back in her convent, mother and daughter sat down to spend the morning together.

Contrary to custom, the pair were silent and preoccupied; each, while she tried to seem at ease, immersed in her own thoughts, and yet, though engrossed with the same subject or meditation, it was strange that neither of them mentioned it to the other.