CHAPTER XVIIITHE HEART OF THE POMPADOUR
Afterhe had left Denise the Chevalier walked for some time in the empty gallery up and down, up and down, striving to master the strong emotion within. But when at last he made his way into the gardens he was once more the jaunty dare-devil cynic whose fine blue eyes had made many a Court beauty feel that even the veteran Vicomte de Nérac had lessons to learn in the art of courtship. By the same Fountain of Neptune where he had met Denise the Chevalier now found a woman waiting, as indeed he expected. Yet, greeting scarcely passed between them.
“You were right,” he began with bitter brevity, “and you have had your way.”
The woman pondered on the reply. “Yes,” she said presently. “I knew I was right. She loves him. And you?” she added, with a swift touch of anxiety.
“I shall finish what I have begun,” he answered with calm determination. “It will cost me my life, perhaps, but,” his tone was savagely reckless, “revenge is better than love.”
The woman put her hand on his arm with affectionate entreaty. “Why not,” she asked, “why not give it all up? It is becoming too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Of course. But it is too late to draw back, and I will keep my oath now—now,” he repeated, lingering on the word, “if I perish to-morrow.” He put his hand quietly on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “You, too, some day will come to believe that revenge is better than love.”
“At least we have no choice,” she answered with a cruel little laugh.
“Don’t! don’t,” the Chevalier whispered, in a sudden tenderness. “What does it matter for me? but you—you—I can’t bear it for you.”
“It is fate,” she said very quietly, “your fate and mine.”
With his arm about her she stood in silence for no small while. They were both thinking their own thoughts, and they were not pleasant.
“Are you quite sure he loves her?” the Chevalier asked.
“I shall know for certain before many days,” she answered, “although a woman feels sure now.”
They parted, as they had met, without greeting, but had the Chevalier followed her he would have seen that the woman went in the direction of “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.” It was probably because he already knew this that he returned to the palace.
All this time Denise had sat crushed and sad, alonein the antechamber. Nor did she know that André had stood for some minutes in the doorway looking at her, had twice stepped forward to speak, had twice restrained himself, and finally had left her to her tears and her silence.
But the one person whom he did not desire to meet found him out by accident at that moment.
“Vicomte,” the Comtesse des Forges called softly, “will you do me a favour?”
André smiled with skilful hypocrisy. The Comtesse was looking her best, and her heavy-lidded eyes were bright with admiration and an exquisite suggestion of self-surrender. “A favour,” she repeated, “which is also a secret. You will promise not to betray me.”
André took her hand to his lips for answer. The jewel on the lady’s breast gently rose and fell, echoing tenderly the coy trembling of her fingers. It was not the first time these two had played with passion, heedless of the future, but André swiftly recognised that this evening it would not be play, pastime, or pleasure.
“We have a petition to the King,” the Comtesse said in her silkiest tones, “a petition from the Court praying His Majesty to dismiss that woman, and we want you to present it. His Majesty will listen to you more than to any other.”
André still held her hand; the devotion in his face was intended to conceal his thoughts. For the crisis that he feared had come. This petition to the Kingfrom the Court was also an ultimatum to himself from his friends.
“It will be useless,” he said gently, “the petition.”
“No—no! You can succeed with the King—you! André,” she pleaded with a thrill of genuine passion, “do it to please me. You know I can be grateful.”
“I cannot,” he replied, controlling himself, “not even to please you, Gabrielle.”
“You will desert your friends and me—me?” she asked, a menace creeping into her languorous voice. “André, it is impossible, surely impossible.”
“I cannot present the petition,” he answered.
Jealousy, fear, anger, swept the passion out of her eyes. “You are afraid?” she demanded, with biting scorn.
“Yes, I am afraid,” he assented, and if the Comtesse had not lost her self-control she must have detected the delicate irony in his grave bow.
“Ah!” she stepped back. “Ah! If Denise had asked you, you would have consented.”
“No,” he corrected with a freezing pride. “I would not permit the Marquise de Beau Séjour even to make the request.”
The answer surprised and delighted her. Yet, woman though she was, the Comtesse failed to read what lay behind it, and in her determination to win she now made a stupid mistake. “I would save you, André,” she whispered, “because—” she laid a jewelled handon his sleeve and dropped her eyes slowly. “They will ruin you unless you consent.”
Why break with the past, the present, and the future? André hesitated, but only for a moment.
“I cannot present the petition,” he answered curtly.
“Very well,” she shrugged her shoulders in disdainful wrath. “Very well. I shall not ask you a second time. You understand; so do I.”
“Adieu!” he said, raising her fingers, but she snatched them back and swept him a cold curtsey.
“Soit!” André was saying to himself as his spurs rang in the empty corridor, “c’est la guerre! Soit!” The die was cast. Madame de Pompadour was his only friend now. Henceforward the Court, his friends, his class, the women whom he had loved, would be his bitterest foes. And it was to that one friend that he now turned. Yet, careful as he was, he was unaware that the Comtesse had followed him stealthily, had marked his entry by the secret door, and returned to the Duke of Pontchartrain with the news.
Madame de Pompadour was alone. “You have something to say?” she questioned eagerly.
André related what had just passed and Madame laughed. “Ah, my friend,” she remarked gaily, “it will need more than a petition to-day.” She flung herself back into her chair, her wonderful eyes ablaze with a magnificently carnal consciousness of victorious beauty and power. “And the Vicomte de Nérac cannot go back now,” she added with a sudden gravity.“The priests, the nobles, the officers might forgive you, but a woman, a comtesse, will neither forget nor forgive, never, never!”
“Yes, Madame,” André said, “I am in your hands.”
Madame de Pompadour moved swiftly towards him. “And I in yours,” she whispered.
The perfect music of her voice, the grace of her figure, the flash in her eyes, were irresistible. Compared with this radiant, triumphant goddess of a royal love, even Gabrielle des Forges seemed a bloodless, heartless puppet.
“I have more to say,” André proceeded, “I verily believe I am on the track of ‘No. 101.’” She turned sharply, her breath came quickly. “Yvonne,” she added, “Yvonne is proving very useful. I have learned from her that the English have a spy, an agent in Paris, that he frequents ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,’ that he has a paid servant at the palace. Before long I mean to have that spy in fetters, and then——” he laughed.
“Good—good!” Madame clapped her hands. “It is only what I suspected. And the wench, Yvonne, is she in it?”
“She is a simple girl, Madame, and I cannot say yet. But in another week I shall know more.”
“Do not be in a hurry. It is pleasant cajoling the truth from a wench,n’est-ce pas?We must act with extreme caution, it is a matter of life and death foryou and me. I, too, have not been idle. Listen. The King’s secret is mine.”
André looked at her sorely puzzled. Madame invited him to sit beside her on the settee. “What is that secret?” she began. “Simply this: Behind the ministers’ backs, contrary indeed to their despatches and their public statements, His Majesty is intriguing with the Jacobites and others too. More, His Majesty both in Paris and elsewhere spies on his own servants and frequently thwarts them. The Chevalier was his secretary and confidant. But there will be no more Chevalier. There will henceforth only be,” she sprung up with a dramatic gesture, “the Marquise de Pompadour.”
“But why,” asked André slowly, “why does His Majesty do it?”
“God knows. It is his foible, his passion. But so long as he had secrets from me I was in constant peril. To-day I have learned all that there is to know; and now,” she paused, “and now, please Heaven, the King will be in my hands alone.”
André was beginning to understand. “The King, in fact,” he commented, “says one thing to the English ministers who desire peace and another to the Jacobites; that may prove desperately dangerous if it is discovered.”
“Exactly. And the master of his secret is master of His Majesty. Ah, my friend, my foes are learning that already, but it will need some sharper lessons beforethey submit. They shall have those lessons, I promise you. I have accepted the challenge of the Court and we shall see what we shall see.”
“Yes, Madame,” André said with sincere admiration, “you will be what you desire to be, the ruler of France.”
Madame de Pompadour drifted into a silent reverie. The dreams could be read in her parted lips and faint smile as the soft light played on every supple curve which this woman’s genius knew how to suggest with such subtle restraint.
“But one person can destroy me,” she remarked presently; “‘No. 101.’”
André was startled by the gravity of her voice. “It is the truth,” she was speaking now with nervous rapidity. “If, which God forbid, the King’s secret intrigues are betrayed by treachery, to save his honour and himself he will, must, find a victim. That victim will be I. Yes, yes, I know the game is dangerous, but play it I must because the King insists. Vicomte, ‘No. 101’ must never,neversucceed in securing any of the King’s secrets as has happened in the past.”
“Surely, Madame, you and I can prevent that.”
“Can we? Can we? Vicomte, I am not a coward nor a fool, but I feel in the poisonous air of this Court, surrounded by deadly enemies, my fate at the mercy of the King’s caprice, that I am fighting not with flesh and blood but with a foe mysterious, superhuman,invincible. And I repeat, should the King’s secret be betrayed by ‘No. 101’ to my enemies I am ruined.”
“I am confident,” André answered, “that not only can I baffle that traitor but that I can discover him.”
Madame de Pompadour studied his calm, handsome face. Then the room seemed suddenly to swim in the glories of a golden dawn. “My friend,” she cried, holding out both her hands impulsively, “I believe you. Did not Fontenoy teach me you are a man?”
“And it taught me—” he began softly.
“Hush!” she rippled over into an adorable coquetry. “You are not the King yet, not yet, though—” it was thevivandièreof Fontenoy whose saucy eyes and curtsey finished the sentence.
“When you are victorious, Madame,” André said, “I shall ask for one favour.”
“Tut! only one! Dare I grant it beforehand?”
She was now the refined Marquise of a remorselessly critical Versailles.
“You can take your revenge on the Court, Madame, as you please, but you must spare,” she put down her fan and waited anxiously, “the Marquise de Beau Séjour.”
There was silence for a minute.
“A woman, a haughty, petted beauty,” she murmured, “and my bitterest foe. Are you aware that Mademoiselle Denise is the soul of the party that would destroy me, the close friend of the Chevalier de St. Amant, and no friend to you.”
“Yes, I know it all.”
Madame de Pompadour came close to him. “She is not worthy of you,” she said quietly, “she does not love you.”
“Madame, I love her.”
“And if I refuse to forego my just vengeance on her?” she awaited his answer with anxiety wreathed in tempting smiles.
“I will share her fate if she will permit it,” he answered simply.
“Chivalrous fool!” she retorted, and she was not wholly jesting. “No woman is worth the sacrifice of such a man as you.”
“Pardon, Madame. Every man who loves a woman perhaps is a fool, but the folly is a folly inspired by God and it leads to heaven.”
The answer surprised her and for the moment she faltered between tears and laughter. “I will not ask again,” André said in a low voice, “for I trust you, Marquise. Adieu!”
She hardly heeded his salute, and André was already in the dark on the secret stairs when he felt a sharp touch on his shoulder. “Be loyal to me, too!” she whispered pleadingly into his ear. “Give me your hand,” and she laid it on her breast. In the darkful hush André could feel the fierce beating of that insurgent, ambitious heart.
“Swear,” she whispered. “Swear with your hand there that you will be loyal also to me, to Antoinette de Pompadour.”
“I swear.” Two words, but two words between a man and a woman can sweep a soul into hell or lift it to heaven.
“The heart of the Pompadour,” she murmured. “Can any man or woman read it? Can she read it herself? God knows. Take care, take care of yourself, my friend,” she added with a sudden wistful pathos. “You alone I can trust. Adieu!”
“The heart of the Pompadour,” André muttered as he stole back to the Queen’s apartments. “The heart of the Pompadour.” What, indeed, was there not written there of passion and ambition? Only a woman’s heart. Yes, but one of the half-dozen women, in the history of the world, the beatings of whose heart have shaped the destinies of peoples and moulded the fate of kingdoms.