CHAPTER XIIA ROYAL GRISETTE
“Monsieur le Vicomte de Nérac,” pronounced the gentleman-usher closing the door behind him.
The King was leaning against the mantelpiece talking to Madame de Pompadour smiling from an arm-chair up at him. The bored, impenetrable royal eyes travelled over André’s figure as he advanced to kneel and kiss his Sovereign’s hand. Madame then without rising held out hers, and André, conscious only of the King’s presence, must swallow his pride and salute as she sat this upstart usurper of royal honours. But the blood of the De Néracs boiled within him.
Louis gazed with lazy approval round the apartment furnished with even greater taste than wealth, at the costly books and pictures, at the unfinished plaster cast which Madame had been modelling, at the plans of buildings littered on a glorious escritoire. A Mæcenas in petticoats, whatever else she was, this adventuress, thought André as he waited in silence, and he recalled the memories of the salon she had held as Madame d’Étiolles for Voltaire, the President Hénault, the Abbé de Bernis, and the other famous wits.
“Madame la Marquise,” said the King abruptly, “will convey my wishes. Good-night, Vicomte.”
The curtains at the other end of the room had scarcely fallen on the departing King when the lady resumed her seat as if she desired the standing André clearly to recognise that the King’s presence made no difference to the rights she claimed. It was, too, as if she insolently invited him to inspect her. And inspect her he did, tingling all the time with rage.
How she looked Nattier and La Tour, who painted her in the heyday of her womanhood and of her beauty, have left on immortal record. And anger could not prevent André’s heart, so susceptible to feminine loveliness, from a swift thrill of homage. That dainty head, the exquisite shape and pose of her neck, those wonderful eyes, now black, now blue, now grey, that bust called by a poetles parfaits plaisirs, the harmony of her heliotrope robe, lace-edged with cunning artlessness—every line, every detail, witnessed to a woman’s magic insight into the handiwork of God. And here in this haughty Versailles, where taste, breeding, and birth were superior to mere beauty, this woman, born abourgeoise, had by some diabolic witchery usurped the polished ease so justly regarded as the heritage and the monopoly of the château and of thenoblesse.
She had risen. “Monsieur le Vicomte,” André noted the musical modulation in her voice, “His Majesty has been pleased to confer on you the fit reward of your valour.”
She was gravely offering him the soldier’s and statesman’s most coveted distinction, the Cordon Bleu. The blood leaped into André’s head. For a moment the room swam blue as the ribbon. “Madame, I thank you,” he stammered.
“It is the King’s gift,” she corrected calmly. For a minute or two they surveyed each other.
“What is it?” she demanded of the servant who had entered.
“The superintendent of police awaits the commands of Madame la Marquise.”
“Let him enter,” she said, resuming her seat and quietly ignoring André.
His anger grew hot again as he observed how she took for granted the official’s humble obedience.
“Study that lampoon,” she said, tossing him a fly-sheet. “You must discover the author and have him punished.”
“But it is impossible, Madame,” the superintendent replied after a pause. “I have no power to arrest, still less to punish, the ladies and gentlemen of Versailles.”
“It comes from the palace, then?”
“It does not come from Paris,” the official answered drily.
She placed the paper in a drawer. For a few seconds the look in her eyes was terrible. “You have the other information I required?” she asked.
“His Majesty last night was closeted with his privatesecretaries till half-past ten. At a quarter to eleven His Majesty walked in the north gallery with the Chevalier de St. Amant. At eleven they met the Marquise de Beau Séjour leaving her Majesty’s apartments. The Chevalier spoke to her, the King did not. At ten minutes past eleven His Majesty went to bed.”
André went cold as ice at the glib report. Denise was right. There would be no peace till this woman had been hunted from her place.
“Good. That will do,” and she dismissed the official. Then she turned her chair.
“The post of master of my household is vacant,” she said. “It is the King’s pleasure that it be filled by the Vicomte de Nérac.”
“I beg pardon, Madame?” André questioned haughtily.
She calmly repeated the sentence, looking him full in the face.
“It is impossible,” he answered, with difficulty restraining his anger.
“Nothing that the King of France is pleased to command a subject can be impossible,” she rejoined almost sweetly.
André clenched his hands and held his tongue. A gentleman must needs accept an insult even from a low-born woman with the dignity due to himself.
“It is the King’s pleasure,” she proceeded with a flash of sarcasm, “but it is not mine. I do not choose to accept the services of the Vicomte de Nérac.”
André gave her a look. Had she been a man she might have lived twenty-four hours, certainly no more.
“Has Monsieur le Vicomte any further observations to offer? No? Then—” she made the pretence of a curtsey. He, André de Nérac, a Croix of St. Louis and a Cordon Bleu, was dismissed.
An icy bow; he was striding to the door.
“Monsieur le Vicomte leaves the Cordon Bleu on the table,” she remarked, but André in his rage paid no heed.
“Mon Dieu!” a caressing laugh caused him to halt with a shiver. “Mon Dieu!so you have forgotten the littlevivandièreat Fontenoy? Ah, well, it is no matter.”
André drew a deep breath. The past swept into his eyes. Was he bewitched or——
“But I have not forgotten,” came that silvery voice, “see the proof,” she was holding up the Cordon Bleu.
“It was you—who,” he sat down overcome.
“To be sure. Who else? I am a good actress, am I not? Ah, yes, the world knows I can act. Paint and powder, a red jacket, a short petticoat with boots half-way to the knees. Would they not stare in the Galerie des Glaces if they knew?” She tripped towards him, head cocked on one side, hands on her hips. “The Vicomte will not betray our secret for all his wrath. ‘It is impossible, Madame, impossible,’” she was mimicking divinely his haughty brevity. “Ah! you will forgive thevivandièrethough youcannot forgive the Marquise de Pompadour. Yes, you did me a service that night for which I have repaid you by an insult. I ask your pardon, for I am grateful.”
In her pleading eyes floated a wonderful tenderness and penitence.
“And every minute,” she pursued softly, “I felt sure you must recognise me. But you did not. My faith! soldiers are strange, so proud and fierce and stupid—eh? But you frightened me, upon my honour you did. I tremble still.”
André stumbled to his feet.
“I am in your power,” she whispered. “No one but you knows that I was at Fontenoy, not even the King. But all France knows that the Vicomte de Nérac saved the army, though they have not learned it was at the bidding of avivandière,” she nodded, the corners of her mouth bewitching.
“It is amazing,” he cried, bewildered, “amazing!”
She gently closed the door behind him. “Perhaps,” she said. “But have you forgotten ‘No. 101’?”
For eighteen months André had not heard a word of that traitor. His existence had been blotted from his memory, but now in a flash the scene in the wood stormed into his mind.
“Ah!” he muttered. “Ah!” One minute of the past and he was once more back in this dainty salon, though his anger and pride were melting fast before the radiant witchery of this strange woman who had conquered a king.
“The treachery of ‘No. 101’ has begun again,” she was saying quietly. “And it will not stop this time, I have good reason to believe, unless—I—” she broke off—“unless——”
Across the memory of the charcoal-burner’s cabin in the grisly wood rang Denise’s warning. The Cordon Bleu gleamed at him from the table. And Captain Statham who had seen the traitor’s face lay dead at his feet. Madame smiled softly as if she divined the meaning of those clenched fingers, the lips that formed a sentence and then were pressed in silence.
Madame briefly recited as the Abbé had done in the Salon de la Paix the story of the stolen despatches and the courier’s fate in the ditch at Vincennes. “It is the second time in three months,” she summed up. “There will be a third before long.”
“You really think so?”
“I am sure of it,” she replied. “The negotiations for peace have commenced, but the war still goes on. This black, infernal treachery is here in Versailles, in our midst, for the prize to a traitor at this critical time is worth a king’s ransom. It is maddening, maddening—believe me, the man or woman who lays bare the mystery will do the King and France a service never to be forgotten. And His Majesty can be grateful.”
André’s ambitious heart throbbed responsive to the skilful touch.
“I mean to discover the traitor. I foiled him at Fontenoy. I will foil him again, but,” she paused,“a woman cannot do it alone. When the King wrote to me before I came to Versailles, ‘Discret et Fidèle’ was his motto. I want to-day a friend who will be ‘discret et fidèle,’ a man without fear, loyal, ingenious, and brave.”
André raised his head sharply. The thoughts were coming fast; he began to see dimly, to hope, to dream.
“I confess,” she pursued, “that I thought the Vicomte de Nérac might be that man, my man. But it is impossible, impossible.”
“Why, Madame?” He was leaning eagerly across the table.
“Why?” She laughed softly. “Because the Marquise de Pompadour is abourgeoise, a heartless, selfish, intriguing wanton, and she can find many who will serve her, who will write ballades to her eyes and sonnets to her bosom, and then behind her back will scribble the foul libels that the soldiers sang at Fontenoy. But the Court, the Queen, the Dauphin, the bishops and priests, the libertines and thedévots, the ministers and the great ladies are leagued in hate against me. It is true, is it not?”
And André could not answer.
“So long as I have the King on my side I am safe. But this palace is a labyrinth of intrigue. If the King grows weary I shall be fortunate to leave Versailles a free woman. And by my ruin those of my service will be ruined too. The task I mean to perform isdoubly dangerous—there is the Court and there is ‘No. 101.’ Yes, it is no task for the Vicomte de Nérac.”
The gentle voice cut like a whip. André began to pace up and down.
“You are young, my friend.” She was looking at him as she had looked when she slipped the pillow beneath his head at Fontenoy. “You are brave, a soldier with great ambitions and a great future, for you have the heart and courage of your race. You are of thenoblesse, your world is not of this salon, but of the Salon de la Paix. Your friends, your blood, have declared war upon me; for a traitor to their cause they will have no mercy. True the King has commanded your services in my household, but Antoinette d’Étiolles, who is grateful for what you did at Fontenoy, refuses to accept because she would not ruin, I cannot say a friend, but a noble hero of France.”
Remorse, ambition, the witchery of her beauty, his love for Denise, strove for mastery within him.
“Adieu,” she whispered, “you must go your way, I mine. We shall meet, perhaps. How long I shall be here God knows. But trust me, I will see that your refusal to accept the King’s pleasure shall do you no harm. You will succeed, you must, for fortune, birth, and manhood are on your side. Adieu!”
“But, Madame—” he cried impulsively.
“No, Vicomte, no. It is impossible. A man may sacrifice himself, but never—never must he sacrifice his love.”
Her eyes rested on him with sympathetic significance. She had divined his secret. André felt the blood scarlet as his uniform in his cheeks. Denise—yes, Denise blocked the way to the future this enchantress had dreamed for him, nay, that he had dreamed for himself.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said slowly, raising her hand to his lips. “But André de Nérac is not ungrateful.”
“Perhaps,” she smiled. “Take your Cordon Bleu. It is none the less deserved because it was asked for by avivandière. Will Monsieur le Vicomte permit? Yes?” she had pinned it to his breast. Her face was very close to his; the flattery in those wonderful eyes caressed his inmost soul. “See,” she whispered.
“This way—it is safer for you.”
She lifted the curtain over an alcove revealing a narrow staircase down to a dark passage. “At the bottom you will find to the left a door locked; here is the key. By that private door you can return to the public galleries. The dark passage leads to the King’s and the Queen’s private apartments. The King, or indeed any one who has the key, can come this way unknown to the spies of the ministers or of the Court. Remember, there are only two keys; the King has one, this is the other. Keep it; you may want it.”
“Want it?” he repeated, confused.
“The Vicomte,” she corrected gently, “henceforth cannot without harming himself visit publicly abourgeoisegrisette. But he will remember that in Antoinette de Pompadour he has, if he will but believe it, a true and grateful friend. If he is in trouble or in difficulty the key will show him the way and no one will be wiser. If not, it is no matter.”
“But, Madame, why should I be in trouble?”
She laughed mysteriously. “Anything, as the Vicomte well knows, can happen at Versailles. Adieu!”
And yet she lingered. “The Cordon Bleu was from the King,” she said; “accept this, pray, from me; it is the handkerchief, the famous handkerchief of the Hôtel de Ville, and it comes from my heart.” She had tossed it to him with an airy kiss blown from her jewelled fingers.
What a charming picture she made, framed in the darkness there with her heliotrope robe drawn back to avoid the dripping of the candle held above her dainty head.Un morceau de roi, parbleu!
“Remember ‘No. 101.’ Adieu.” The soft echo stole into the chill passage. The Marquise had dropped the curtain and André was alone with his thoughts.