THE TRAITOR’S WAY
THE TRAITOR’S WAY
Isupposethere is no man who would care to have sunlight in all his life; but I hardly think there is one who could have sunk to the deep as I did, and yet have been coward enough to live, as I do—I, Gaspard de Vibrac.
As I write these lines in my study in lonely Vibrac, the four white stars on my shield, carved in relief above the fireplace, seem to burn red with the memory of my shame, and nothing can wipe out that stain in my ’scutcheon—nothing, nothing!
Thank God! I am the last of my house! Thank God! No young feet patter up and down the long corridors; no young voices shrill through these silent rooms. They would grow up to know me as the “Shame of Vibrac.” The very villagers, my serfs, dogs, whom I could send to thecarcauwith a nod of my head, scowl as they doff their caps to me, and the children shiver and shrink behind their mothers’ skirts on those rare occasions when I come out of the château. I suppose they know the story—and I live!
And is this the pity of God? He has spared my life. Good men, honorable gentlemen, my friends—I had such friends once—have died like vermin. The Lake of Geneva holds all that is left of Maligny,le beau cadet, as we called him; the Vidame died at the galleys, chained to the scum of mankind. But he died, Maligny died, even Achon died, that merciless priest! And I live as a leper! I have come to know that death is the pity of God.
Forty years back there was life and strength, a hot heart, and no count kept of the score. Since then I have paid and paid; but the hideous total of my debt yet looms as large as ever.
As I look back into the past, it seems but as yesterday to me that gray afternoon, the day following the St. Germain’s Affair, when Court and city were alike convulsed with terror at the discovery of the conspiracy that was to end in the shambles at Amboise, and I rode from the Louvre, through the buzzing streets of Paris, to my house in the Rue Coquillière.
Of course I was hilt deep in the matter, and, even as I rode, there was a list of names in my pocket that would have brought the heads of the owners thereof to the block did but the Cardinal of Lorraine or Catherine de Medicis cast but an eye on the scroll. Prudence had counselled me to leave Paris, as most of the others had done; but as yet I was sure that the Flies of Guise had not settled upon me, and again, when a man is four-and-twenty and in love, prudence is cast to thefour winds of heaven. And so I risked my neck for a pair of blue eyes, as many another man has done, and will do, and whilst I rode I placed my hand at my breast pocket, not to feel if the scroll of names was safe, but to assure myself that a letter and a delicate embroidered glove lay there over my heart. They were there; but even through my madness I felt a touch of shame, and my hand dropped to my side, for glove and letter had come from another man’s wife—and he was my friend.
In a few yards I was at my own gates, and riding into the courtyard, dismounted and hurried within. I wanted to gaze upon the glove again, to read the letter once more, and to think—if ever man had need for reflection I had then.
In my study I found Majolais, the dumb, black dwarf, whom I had purchased as a gift for the Princess of Condé. He lay asleep, with his head, hideous as that of a gargoyle, resting upon a cushion of yellow satin. Ringing for my equerry, I gave orders for the dwarf to be sent at once to the Princess, and it took two men to remove him, for the creature seemed to have become attached to me in a strange, wild way, and fought like a mad thing to gain my side, uttering strange sounds from his tongueless throat as he struggled with a wonderful strength to gain my side.
At last, however, he was taken away, and I was alone. Flinging myself into a chair by the window I took out the glove and the letter. Theglove I kissed and placed on a table beside me, and the letter I read again and again.
It was a mad, pitiful letter, and in the blurred and hasty lines were words that could only have been written by a woman who for the moment had lost all power of reason, and was ready to leap into the abyss from which there is no return. I will speak no more of it. I should have destroyed it then and there, but that I too had lost all control over myself, and for the sake of Marie de Marcilly was ready to deceive my friend and beggar myself of my honor. When I thought of her and her unhappiness all thought of Jean de Marcilly was lost, although I had first seen war under him at the Escaillon and at Renty, though we had ridden side by side, the day he took “The Emperor’s Pistols,” though he had saved my life in the trenches before Thionville—though, in short, he was a brave and noble gentleman and my friend. At that moment, however, he was to me the man who stood between me and my love. I had not reached this stage at once. I had fought and struggled with myself and lost. And now I was ready to take the downward steps to guilt, and descending is always easy.
It was in this frame of mind that I slowly folded the letter and put it back when the door opened, and Badehorn, my equerry, a stolid German, stepped in.
“A lady to see monsieur.”
“A lady!” I half stammered, rising from mychair, with the wildest thoughts running through my mind.
“Monsieur!”
“Show her in, please,” I said, my voice shaking, my hands stone-cold. Badehorn bowed and retired. For an instant I stood in breathless expectation, then the door opened again, and the woman I loved stood before me.
I can see her now as in a mirror, tall and slight, with the fair hair and blue eyes that came to her from her English mother. The hood of the long, gray cloak she wore was thrown back, her cheeks were pale and the red gone out of the perfect bow of her lips.
“Madame,” I began, hardly knowing what to say; but she came forward with hasty steps.
“Monsieur de Vibrac—I have come to warn you. You are amongst the suspected—you must leave Paris at once.”
“Monsieur de Vibrac,” I repeated a little bitterly; but she took no notice, and continued in the same quick, hurried manner.
“Go! I implore you! Go! It will be too late to-morrow. They have taken the Vidame, and my—my husband has fled.”
“Marcilly gone! And left you!”
A rush of color came to her cheeks.
“I warned him. It was the merest chance that I found out—and—and——”
She made no answer, and then, with the room swimming around me, I dropped on my knee beforeher, and, taking her hand—it was as cold as mine—pleaded with all my soul.
“Madame! I have got your letter, and I know now all your unhappiness—and I know, too, another thing—else you had not come here to save my life. Oh, Madame!” And rising, I stood beside her. “The world is not made for sorrow——”
“You are mad,” she murmured, but her hand still lay in mine. I was mad, and she spoke the truth, and the desperate words burst from me.
“Marie, I love you. Come with me, and let us end this life of misery for you and for me. You love me—”
“I have never said so——”
“Does man or woman ever need to be told that, Marie? You have saved my life. Let me devote that life to you, and give you life and happiness. I will leave Paris to-night. There is a wicket gate in the gardens of the Louvre beyond the riding school. I have the key. Meet me there at compline, and when the sun rises to-morrow we will be safe from pursuit, and then, Marie—and then—happiness for you and for me——”
I stopped, for her face was as marble, and with a shiver she murmured to herself,
“What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Marie!” I began; but she stayed me with a gesture, and putting her hands on my shoulders, looked straight into my eyes.
“Vibrac, you know not what you say. You are as mad as I am. Think what this will mean to you and to me! Think what the world will say!”
“I have thought, and I care not. What is the world to me, or I to the world? I am not mad. Let me save you from a life you hate. I will save you—there is not one who shall stand between me and the woman I love.”
“You love?” Her voice was so low the words might have been a whisper.
“Aye, love! And with a love you do not dream of, dear.”
“It will spoil your life—I cannot—I cannot!”
“Marie! it will make my life—come!”
She said nothing, but stood still as a stone, her bosom heaving, and her eyes wet with tears. I tried to draw her towards me, to kiss her, but she shrank back.
“Not now,” she whispered, and my arm dropped to my side, and we stood gazing at each other, two wandering souls that had passed out into the unknown seas. At last she spoke again, her words coming slowly and with an effort.
“You will never regret, Vibrac? Will you?”
“My queen! Can you ask?” And bending low I touched her hand with my lips. She drew back once more quickly, and pulling her hood up, held the folds at her neck with her hand as she said:
“I must go—let me go now.”
“Until compline—and you will be at the wicket gate?”
She but bent her head in reply, and turned as if to go. It was at this moment that we heardvoices in the corridor outside, and then a hurried knocking at the door. Marie ran back to my side with a little gasp.
“They are come to take you—oh, Vibrac!”
But there was no tread of spurred heels, no clash of arms, only that insistent knocking, and then a voice:
“Vibrac! Vibrac! It is I—Marcilly!”
We two but glanced at each other, a guilty shrinking glance. Then springing forward, I took Marie by the arm, and almost dragged her across the room to where a curtained archway separated my study from a dressing-room.
“In there! Quick!” I whispered; “open the door beyond, and go out by the private way; I will stop him here.”
She fled through the passage, and letting the curtain fall I walked up to the door with a trembling heart, and drew back the bolt, to find Marcilly before me, with Badehorn standing behind him, a look of alarm in his face.
“You! In Paris!” I exclaimed.
“Not by my own will,” he laughed grimly; “but, thanks to this dress, I am still safe,” and then for the first time I noticed that he was clad in the black and yellow of Guise.
“Let no one interrupt us, Badehorn,” I said; and with an affected cordiality—I seemed to learn without effort to play the hypocrite—I took Marcilly’s arm and drew him within whilst he continued talking.
“I had this dress ready for an emergency, and actually helped to batter in my own doors. Then seeing a chance of getting away I slipped up here, where I knew I would be safe for an hour or so,” and with these words he flung himself into the chair near the window, and began playing with the glove I had left on the table.
Sick at heart as I was with the fear that he would recognize the glove, I could not help, even then, noticing the extraordinary resemblance that he bore to the Prince of Condé, the secret chief of our conspiracy, a resemblance that had given Marcilly the nickname of “The Shadow of Condé.” And as I stared at him he glanced up at me, running his eyes over my gay court dress.
“You are safe as yet, I see,” he said, “and have time for these things,” and he flicked the glove from side to side.
“I leave Paris to-night. I am no longer safe.”
“Then we will go together and join the Prince. It must be open war now. Thank God! The Cardinal is a poltroon, and has lost his head, else they would have trapped us like rabbits—but there are still some men amongst the Guisards, and they may be here any moment. Come!” And he started up, the glove still in his hand. “Let us be off!”
For an instant I knew not what to say; then recovering myself with an effort I told him: “I will meet you at compline—at the Porte St.Victor.” It was the gate opposite to that by which I meant to leave Paris.
“At compline! Between this and compline we may have lodgings in the Châtelet—what bee have you got in your head to stay here now?”
Unconsciously my eyes fell on the glove in his hand, and following my glance he jumped to a conclusion.
“I see,” he said with a bitter laugh, “this trifle! A pretty toy,” and then, looking at it curiously, “’tis almost small enough to fit her hand.”
Did the man suspect or know? Was he trifling with me? For the moment I thought he was, and watched him with a new-born cowardice in my heart. Even as I did so I thought I heard a movement in the room within, and glanced round with a guilty start. Surely Marie had not stayed? It could not be! And then I turned again to Marcilly. He had not observed that start and backward look. He was staring at the glove in his hand.
“The very perfume she uses,” he murmured to himself, and, laying the glove gently on the table, he looked me full in the face, saying—
“I wish you all happiness, Vibrac, if it is as I think. More happiness than has fallen to me!”
“You! You are the most fortunate of men.”
He laughed shortly and sadly.
“Fortunate! Do you call that man fortunate who has seen his wife’s love pass from him?”
“Pass from him?”
“Yes! Do you call that man happy who, loving his wife as I do, sees day by day a gulf opening between them. Bah! You must have known all this—you, and all the rest. Else why do I live in the Rue Bourgogne and my wife at the Louvre?”
“It will pass away. There must be some mistake.”
“It will pass when I die—and I have sought for death for long. God knows! I would have let myself be taken to-day but that she herself wrote to warn me—and that letter which I have here” (he placed his hand to his heart) “has given me some hope. It came to me like a ray of sunshine—she would not have written if she did not care.”
I felt my forehead burn with shame. I was as yet too new at the game to play the villain without remorse. For an instant, when I thought of what this man had been to me, my old leader, my friend, I saw my infamy in all its meanness, and I was within an ace of telling him all, and asking him to slay me where I stood; and then, like lightning, there came to me the other thought—no—I would not yield her—for her I would pay any price. But I could not bear to have the man before me longer. It was unendurable, and to cover the expression on my face I stepped to the window. “It rains,” I said for want of something to say, and he was by my side in a moment.
“There is nothing like rain to clear the streets and give us a chance. Let us go now.”
I turned on him almost savagely.
“I have an appointment that I must keep; that I will keep if I die for it; but you, Marcilly—why stay? Outside Paris there is safety, and as you yourself have said, you have begun to hope again. There is danger here, but danger that I must face. Take my advice and go now.”
“I cannot desert you.”
I blazed up in sudden wrath. Would I never be free of this accusing presence?
“Monsieur le Comte, I have not asked your aid—my business is private.”
We stared at each other, surprise and anger in his glance. For an instant I almost hoped he was going to draw on me, for there was no more fierce spirit than Jean de Marcilly; but he controlled himself with a mighty effort.
“Forgive me, Gaspard!” he said, “we are too old in friendship to quarrel.Au revoir!I will meet you at the Porte St. Victor.”
“No!” I said, “I cannot promise to be there. Ride straight from Paris—go straight to the Prince. There are blows to be struck. I—-I will join you later. But leave me now. This house is no refuge, and our ways must be separate.”
“I will wait in any case until compline at the Porte St. Victor,” he repeated, and held out his hand.
I nerved myself to take it, and two minutes later saw him trot out of the courtyard into the street.