Читать книгу Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century - G. J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 6

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Year by year a certain stag had been growing fatter and fatter in the deep glades and quiet woodlands that surrounded Fontainebleau. He was but a pricket when Cerise made her daisy-chain in the gardens of Versailles, but each succeeding summer he had rubbed the velvet off another point on his antlers, and in all the king’s chase was no finer head than he carried the day he was to die. Brow, bay, and tray, twelve in all, with three in a cup at the summits, had been the result of some half-score years passed in the security and shelter of a royal forest; nor was the lapse of time which had thus brought head and haunch to perfection without its effect upon those for whose pastime the noble beast must fall.

Imagine, then, a glowing afternoon, the second week in August. Not a cloud in the sky, a sun almost tropical in its power, but a pure clear air that fanned the brow wherever the forest opened into glades, and filled the broad nostrils of a dozen large, deep-chested, rich-coloured stag-hounds, snuffing and questing busily down a track of arid grass that seemed to have checked their steady, well-considered unrelenting chase, and brought their wondrous instinct to a fault. One rider alone watched their efforts with a preoccupied air, yet with the ready glance of an old sportsman. He had apparently reached his point of observation before the hounds themselves, and far in advance of the rest of the chase. His close-fitting blue riding-coat, trimmed with gold-lace and turned back with scarlet facings, called a “just au corps,” denoted that he was a courtier; but the keen eye, the erect figure, the stateliness, even stiffness of his bearing, smacked of the old soldier, more, the old soldier of France, perhaps the most professional veteran in the world.

He was not so engrossed with his own thoughts, however, but that his eye gleamed with pleasure when a tan-coloured sage, intent on business, threw a square sagacious head into the air, proclaiming in full deep notes his discovery of the line, and solemn conviction that he was right. The horseman swore a good round garrison oath, and cheered the hound lustily. A cry of tuneful tongues pealed out to swell the harmony. A burst of music from a distant glade announced that the stag had passed yet farther on. A couple of royal foresters, in blue and red, arrived on foot, breathless, with fresh hounds struggling in the leash; and a lady on a Spanish barb, attended by a plainly-dressed ecclesiastic, came cantering down the glade to rein up at the veteran’s side, with a smile of greeting on her face.

“Well met, Monsieur le Prince, once more,” said she, flashing a look from her dark eyes, under which, old as he was, he lowered his own. “Always the same—always successful. In the Court—in the camp—in the ball-room—in the field—if you seek the Prince-Marshal, look in the most forward post, and you will find him.”

She owed him some reparation for having driven him from her side in a fit of ill-humour half an hour before, and this was her way of making amends.

“I have won posts in my time, madame,” said the old soldier, an expression of displeasure settling once more on his high worn features, “and held them, too, without dishonour. It is perhaps no disgrace to be worsted by a woman, but it is humiliating and unpleasant all the same.”

“Dishonour and disgrace are words that can never be coupled with the name of Chateau-Guerrand,” returned the lady, smiling sweetly in his face, a process that appeared to mollify him considerably. Then she completed his subjection by caressing her horse with one hand, while she reined him in so sharply with the other, that he rose on his hind-legs as if to rear straight on end.

“You are a hard mistress, madame,” said the gentleman, looking at the beautiful barb chafing and curveting to its bit.

“It is only to show I am mistress,” she answered in a low voice, that seemed to finish the business, for turning to her attendant cavalier, who had remained discreetly in the background, she signed to him that he might come up and break the tête-à-tête, while she added gaily—

“I am as fond of hunting as you are, prince. Hark! The stag is still forward. Our poor horses are dying with impatience. Let us gallop on together.”

The Marquise de Montmirail had considerably altered in character since she tended the infirmities of her poor old husband, or sat in widow’s garments with her pretty child on her knee. A few years at the Court of France had brought to the surface all the evil of her character, and seemed to have stifled in her everything that was good. She had lost the advantage of her daughter’s companionship, for Cerise (and in this perhaps the Marquise was right) had been removed to a distance from the Court and capital, to bloom into womanhood in the healthier atmosphere of a provincial convent. She missed her darling sadly, no doubt, and for the first year or two contented herself with the gaieties and distractions common to her companions. She encouraged no lover, properly so called, and had seldom fewer than three admirers at a time. Nor had the king of late taken special notice of her; so she was only hated by the other Court ladies with the due hatred to which she was entitled from her wealth, beauty, and attractions.

After a while, however, she put in for universal dominion, and then of course the outcry raised against her was loud and long sustained. She heeded it little; nay, she seemed to like it, and bandied sarcasms with her own sex as joyously, to all appearance, as she exchanged compliments with the other.

She never faltered. She never committed herself. She stood on the brink, and never turned giddy nor lost her presence of mind. What she required, it seemed, what she could not live without, was influence, more or less, but the stronger the better, over every male creature that crossed her path. When this was gained, she had done with them unless they were celebrities, or sufficiently frivolous to be as variable as herself. In either of such cases she took considerable pains to secure the empire she had won. What she liked best was to elicit an offer of marriage. She was supposed to have refused more men, and of more different ranks, than any woman in France. For bachelor or widower who came within the sphere of her influence there was no escape. Sooner or later he must blunder into the net, and the longer he fought the more complete and humiliating was his eventual defeat. “Nothing,” said the Abbé Malletort, “nothing but the certainty of the king’s unacknowledged marriage to Madame de Maintenon prevented his cousin from obtaining and refusing an offer of the crown of France.”

She was beautiful, too, no doubt, which made it so much worse—beautiful both with the beauty of the intellect and the senses. Not strictly by any rules of art, but from grace of outline, richness of colouring, and glowing radiance of health. She had all the ways, too, of acknowledged beauty; and even people who did not care for her were obliged to admit she possessed that strange, indefinite, inexplicable charm which every man finds in the woman he loves.

The poor Prince-Marshal, Hector de Chateau-Guerrand, had undergone the baptism of fire at sixteen, had fought his duels, drank his Burgundy, and lost an estate at lansquenet in a night before he was twenty. Since then he had commanded the Musketeers of the Guard—divisions of the great king’s troops—more than once a French army in the field. It was hard to be a woman’s puppet at sixty—with wrinkles and rheumatism, and failing health, with every pleasure palling, and every pain enhanced. Well, as he said himself, “le cœur ne vieillit jamais!” There is no fool like an old one. The Prince-Marshal, for that was the title by which he was best known, had never been ardently attached to anybody but himself till now. We need not envy him his condition.

“Let us gallop on together,” said the Marquise; but ere they could put their horses in motion a yeoman-pricker, armed to the teeth, rode rapidly by, and they waited until his Majesty should have passed. Their patience was not tried for long. While a fresh burst of horns announced another view of the quarry further on, the king’s little calèche turned the corner of the alley at speed, and was pulled up with considerable dexterity, that its occupant might listen for a moment to determine on his future course. Louis sat by himself in a light, narrow carriage, constructed to hold but one person. He was drawn by four cream-coloured horses, small, well-bred, and active. A child of some ten years of age acted postilion to the leaders, but the king’s own hand drove the pair at wheel, and guided them with all the skill and address of his early manhood.

Nevertheless, he looked very old and feeble when he returned the obeisance of the Prince-Marshal and his fair companion. Always punctiliously polite, Louis lifted his hat to salute the Marquise, but his chin soon sank back on his chest, and the momentary gleam died out in his dull and weary eyes.

It was obvious his health was failing day by day; he was now nearly seventy-seven years of age, and the end could not be far off. As he passed on, an armed escort followed at a few paces distance. It was headed by a young officer of the Grey Musketeers, who saluted the Prince-Marshal with considerable deference, and catching the eye of the Marquise, half halted his horse; and then, as if thinking better of it, urged him on again, the colour rising visibly in his brown handsome face.

The phenomenon of a musketeer blushing was not likely to be lost on so keen an observer as Madame de Montmirail, particularly when the musketeer was young, handsome, and an excellent horseman.

“Who is that on guard?” said she, carelessly of course, because she really wanted to know. “A captain of the Grey Musketeers evidently. And yet I do not remember to have seen his face at Court before.”

Now it was not to be expected that a Marshal of France should show interest, at a moment’s notice, in so inferior an official as a mere captain of musketeers, more particularly when riding with a “ladye-love” nearly thirty years younger than himself, and of an age far more suitable to the good-looking gentleman about whom she made inquiries. Nevertheless, the Prince had no objection to enter on any subject redounding to his own glorification, particularly in war, and it so happened that the officer in question had served as his aide-de-camp in an affair that won him a Marshal’s baton; so he reduced his horse’s pace forthwith, and plunged into the tempting subject.

“A fine young man, madame,” said the Prince-Marshal, like a generous old soldier as he was, “and a promising officer as ever I had the training of. He was with me while a mere cadet in that business when I effected my junction with Vendôme at Villa-Viciosa, and I sent him with despatches from Brighuega right through Staremberg’s uhlans, who ought to have cut him into mince-meat. Even Vendôme thanked him in person, and told me himself I must apply for the brave child’s promotion.”

Like other ladies, the Marquise suffered her attention to wander considerably from these campaigning reminiscences. She roused herself, however, enough to answer, not very pertinently—

“What an odious man the Duke is, and how hideous. Generally drunk, besides, and always disagreeable!”

The Prince-Marshal looked a little put out, but he did not for this allow himself to be diverted from his subject.

“A very fortunate soldier, madame,” he replied, pompously; “perhaps more fortunate than really deserving. Nevertheless, in war as in love, merit is of less importance than success. His Majesty thought well to place the Duke over the head of officers whose experience was greater, and their services more distinguished. It is not for me to offer an opinion. I serve France, madame, and you,” he added, with a smile, not too unguarded, because some of his teeth were gone, “I am proud to offer my homage to both.”

The Marquise moved her horse impatiently. The subject did not seem to amuse her, but the Prince-Marshal had got on a favourite theme, and was not going to abandon it without a struggle.

“I do not think, madame,” he proceeded, laying his hand confidentially on the barb’s crest—“I do not think I have ever explained to you in detail the strategical reasons of my forced march on Villa-Viciosa in order to co-operate with Vendôme. I have been blamed in military circles for evacuating Brighuega after taking it, and abandoning the position I held at the bridge the day before the action, which I had caused to be strengthened during the night. Now there is much to be urged on both sides regarding this movement, and I will endeavour to make clear to you the arguments for and against the tactics I thought it my duty to adopt. In the first place, you must bear in mind that the enemy’s change of front on the previous morning, which was unexpected by us, and for which Staremberg had six cogent reasons, being as follows—”

The Marquise looked round to her other cavalier in despair; but no assistance was to be expected from the cynical Abbé—for it was Malletort in attendance, as usual, on his cousin.

The Prince-Marshal was, doubtless, about to recount the dispositions and manœuvres of three armies seriatim, with his own advice and opinions thereon, when relief came to his listener from a quarter in which she least expected it.

She was preparing herself to endure for the hundredth time the oft-told tale, when her horse started, snorted, trembled violently, and attempted to wheel round. In another instant an animal half as big as itself leaped leisurely into the glade, and went lurching down the dry sunny vista as if in utter disregard and contempt of its pursuers.

The stag had been turned back at several points by the horns of the foresters, who thus melodiously greeted every appearance of their quarry. He was beginning to think some distant refuge would be safer and more agreeable; also his instinct told him that the scent would improve while he grew warmer, and that his noisy pursuers would track him more and more unerringly as the sun went down.

Already he felt the inconvenience of those fat haunches and that broad russet back he carried so magnificently; already he heard the deep-mouthed chorus chiming nearer and nearer, full, musical, and measured, like a death-bell.

“En avant!” exclaimed Madame de Montmirail, as the stag, swerving from a stray hound, stretched into an honest, undisguised gallop down the glade, followed by the straggler at its utmost speed, labouring, over-paced, distressed, but rolling on, mute, resolute, and faithful to the line. The love of rapid motion, inseparable from health, energy, and high spirits, was strong in the Marquise. Her barb, in virtue of his blood, possessed pace and endurance; his mistress called on him to prove both, while she sped along on the line of chase, accompanied by several of the hounds, as they straggled up in twos and threes, and followed by most of the equestrians.

Thus they reached the verge of the forest, and here stood the king’s calèche drawn up, his Majesty signing to them feebly yet earnestly that the stag was away over the plain.

Great was now the confusion at so exciting and so unexpected an event. The foresters, with but little breath to spare, managed to raise a final flourish on their horns. The yeoman-prickers spurred their horses with a vigour more energetic than judicious; the hounds, collecting as it seemed from every quarter of the forest, were already stringing, one after another, over the dusty plain. The king, too feeble to continue the chase, yet anxious to know its result, whispered a few words to his officer of the guard, and the Musketeer, starting like an arrow from a bow, sped away after the hounds with some half-dozen of the keenest equestrians, amongst whom were the Marquise and the Prince-Marshal. Many of the courtiers, including the Abbé, seemed to think it disloyal thus to turn their backs on his Majesty, and gathered into a cluster to watch with interjections of interest and delight the pageant of the fast-receding chase. The far horizon was bounded by another range of woods, and that shelter the stag seemed resolved to reach. The intervening ground was a vast undulating plain, crossed apparently by no obstacles to hounds or horsemen, and varied only by a few lines of poplars and a paved high-road to the nearest market-town.

The stag then made direct for this road, but long ere he could reach it, the chase had become so severe that many of the hounds dropped off one by one; and of the horses, only those ridden by the Marquise, the Prince-Marshal, and the Grey Musketeer, were able to keep up the appearance of a gallop.

Presently these successful riders drew near enough to distinguish clearly the object of their pursuit. The Musketeer was in advance of the others, who galloped on abreast, every nerve at its highest strain, and too preoccupied to speak a syllable.

Suddenly a dip in the ground hid the stag from sight; then he appeared again on the opposite rise, looking darker, larger, and fresher than before.

The Musketeer turned round and pointed towards the hollow in front. In a few more strides his followers perceived a fringe of alders serpentining between the two declivities. Madame de Montmirail’s dark eyes flashed, and she urged her barb to yet greater exertions.

The Musketeer sat back in his saddle, and seemed to collect his horse’s energies for an effort. There was an increase of speed, a spring, a stagger, and he was over the rivulet that stole deep and cool and shining between the alders.

The Marquise followed his horse’s footmarks to an inch, and though the barb threw his head up wildly, and galloped furiously at it, he too cleared the chasm and reached the other side in safety.

The Prince-Marshal’s old blood was warmed up now, and he flew along, feeling as he used in the days of the duels, and the Burgundy, and the lansquenet. He shouted and spurred his steed, urging it with hand and voice and leg, but the highly-broken and well-trained animal felt its powers failing, and persistently declined to attempt the feat it had seen the others accomplish; so the Prince-Marshal was forced to discontinue the chase and remain on the safe side of the rubicon, whence he turned his horse unwillingly homewards, heated, angry, and swearing many strange oaths in different languages.

Meanwhile the other two galloped on, the Marquise, though she spared no effort, finding herself unable to overtake the captain of Grey Musketeers.

All at once he stopped short at a clump of willows, through which the chase had disappeared, and jumping off his horse, left the panting beast to its own devices. When she reached the trees, and looked down into the hollow below, she perceived the stag up to its chest in a bright, shallow pool, at bay, and surrounded by the eager though exhausted hounds.

The Musketeer had drawn his couteau de chasse, and was already knee-deep in the water, but hearing her approach, turned back, and, taking his hat off, with a low obeisance, offered her the handle of his weapon.

It was the customary form when a lady happened to be present on such an occasion, though, as now, the compliment was almost always declined.

He had scarcely gone in and given the coup de grace, which he did like an accomplished sportsman, before some of the yeomen-prickers and other attendants came up, so that the disembowelling and other obsequies were performed with proper ceremony. Long, however, ere these had been concluded the Marquise was riding her tired horse slowly homeward through the still, sweet autumn evening, not the least disturbed that she had lost the Abbé and the rest of her escort, but ruminating, pleasantly and languidly, as her blood cooled down, on the excitement of the chase and the events of the day.

She watched the sunset reddening and fading on the distant woods; the haze of twilight gradually softening, and blurring and veiling the surrounding landscape; the curved edge of the young moon peering over the trees, and the evening-star hanging, like a golden lamp, against the purple curtain of the sky.

With head bent down, loose reins, and tired hands resting on her lap, Madame de Montmirail pondered on many matters as the night began to fall.

She wondered at the Abbé’s want of enterprise, at the Prince-Marshal’s activity—if the first could have yet reached home, and whether the second, with his rheumatism, was not likely to spend a night in the woods.

She wondered at the provoking cynicism of the one and the extraordinary depressive powers possessed by the other; more than all, how she could for so long have supported the attentions of both.

She wondered what would have happened if the barb had fallen short at his leap; whether the Musketeer would have stopped in his headlong course to pity and tend her, and rest her head upon his knee, inclining to the belief that he would have been very glad to have the opportunity.

Then she wondered what it was about this man’s face that haunted her memory, and where she could have seen those bold keen eyes before.