CHAPTER XIII.

HOW DE BERQUIN INVITED DEATH


 

"Mademoiselle!" I whispered, starting up and taking her hand.

She trembled slightly, and averted her look. But she did not draw away her hand.

"You are still disturbed by Marianne's news," I said. "But you have little more reason to fear when M. de la Chatre is at Clochonne than if he were at the other end of the province."

"Yet I do fear, monsieur," she said, in a low tone, "for your sake."

"Then if you will fear," said I, "I take great happiness in knowing that it is for me. But this is no place or time for fear. Look and listen. The moonlight, the sounds of the forest, the song of the nightingale, all speak of peace."

"The song of the nightingale may give place to the clash of swords and the cries of combat," she replied. "And because you have delayed here with me, you now risk the peril you are in."

"Peril is familiar company to me, mademoiselle," I said, gaily. "It comes and it goes. It is a very welcome guest when it brings with it the sweetest lady in the world."

Talking thus, I led her around the side of the château to the old garden appertaining to it, a place now wild with all kinds of forest growth, its former use indicated by a broken statue, a crumbling grotto, and in its centre an old sun-dial overgrown with creepers. The path to the sun-dial was again passable, thanks to my frequent visits to the spot since my first arrival at Maury. It was up this path that we now went.

The moonlight and the presence of mademoiselle made the place a very paradise to me. We two were alone in the garden. The moon spread beauty over the broken walls of the château on one side, and the green vegetation around us leaving some places in mysterious shade. The sun-dial was all in light, and so was mademoiselle standing beside it. I breathed sweet wild odors from the garden. From some part of the château came the soft twang of the strings responding to the fingers of the gypsy, I held the soft hand of mademoiselle. I raised it to my lips.

"I love you, I love you!" I whispered.

She made no answer, only looked at me with a kind of mingled grief and joy, bliss embittered by despair.

"It cannot be," I went on, "that Heaven would permit so great a love to find no response. Will you not answer me, mademoiselle?"

"What answer would you have?" she asked, in a perturbed voice.

"I would have love for love."

Her answer was arrested by the sound of the gypsy's voice, which at that instant rose in an old song, that one in which a woman's love is likened to a light or a fire. These are the first words:

"Bright as the sun, more quick to fade; Fickle as marsh-lights prove; Where brightest, casting deepest shade--False flame of woman's love."

"Heed the song, monsieur," said mademoiselle, in the tone of one who warns vaguely of a danger which dare not be disclosed openly.

"It is an old, old song," I answered. "The raving of some misanthrope of bygone time."

"It has truth in it," she said.

"Nay, he judged all women from some bitter experience of his own. His song ought to have died with him, ought to be shut up in the grave wherein he lies, with his sins and his sorrows."

"Though the man is dead, the truth he sang is not. Heed it, monsieur, as a warning from the dead to the living, a warning to all brave men who unwarily trust in women!"

"I needed no song to warn me, mademoiselle," I said, thinking of Mile. d'Arency and M. de Noyard. "I have in my own time seen something of the treachery of which some women are capable."

"You have loved other women?" she said, quickly.

"Once I thought I loved one, until I learned what she was."

"What was she?" she asked, slowly, as if divining the answer, and dreading to hear it.

"She was a tool of Catherine de Medici's," said I, speaking with all the more contempt when I compared the guileful court beauty, Mile. d'Arency, with the pure, sweet woman before me; "one of those creatures whom Catherine called her Flying Squadron, and she betrayed a very honest gentleman to his death."

"Betrayed him!" she repeated.

"Yes, by a pretended love tryst."

Mademoiselle trembled, and held out her hand to the dial for support.

Something in her attitude, something in the pose of her slender figure, something in her white face, her deep, wide-open eyes, so appealed to my love, to my impulse to protect her, that I clasped her in my arms, and drew her close to me. She made no attempt to repulse me, and into her eyes came the look of surrender and yielding.

"Ah, mademoiselle, Julie," I murmured, for she had told me her name, "you do not shrink from me, your hand clings to mine, the look in your eyes tells what your lips have refused to utter. The truth is out, you love me!"

She closed her eyes, and let me cover her face with kisses.

Presently, still holding her hand in mine, I stepped to the other side of the sun-dial, so that we stood with it between us, our hands clasped over it.

"There needs no oath between us now," said I, "yet here let us vow by the moonlight and the sunlight that mark the time on this old dial. I pledge you here, on the symbol of time, to fidelity forever!"

"False flame of woman's love!"

came the song of the gypsy, before mademoiselle could answer.

The look of unresisting acquiescence faded from her face. She started backward, drew her hand quickly from mine, and with the words, "Oh, monsieur, monsieur!" glided swiftly from the garden and around the château. In perplexity, I followed. When I reached the courtyard she was not there. She had gone in, and to her chamber.

But I was happy. I felt that now she was mine. Her face, her attitude, had spoken, if not her lips. As for her breaking away, I thought that due to a last recurrence of her old scruples concerning the barrier between us. I did not attribute it to the effect of the sudden intrusion of the gypsy's song. It was by mere accident, I told myself, that her scruples had returned at the moment of that intrusion. What was there in her love that I need fear? She had told me to heed the song as a warning. I considered this a mere device on her part to check the current of my wooing. Her old scruples or her maidenly impulses might cause her to use for that purpose any device that might occur. But, how long she might postpone the final confession of surrender, it must come at last, for the surrender itself was already made. Her heart was mine. What mattered it now though the governor had come to Clochonne solely in quest of me? What though he knew my hiding-place, discovered by the persistent De Berquin, and its location by him communicated through Barbemouche? For, I said to myself, if De Berquin had sent word to the governor, Barbemouche must have been the messenger, for the three rascals now held at Maury could not have been relied on, and they had the appearance of having wandered in the forest several days.

I was just about to summon Blaise, that I might learn the result of his interrogations, when I heard the voice of Maugert, who was lying in watch by the forest path, call out:

"Who goes there?"

"We are friends," came the answer, quickly.

This voice also I knew, as well as Maugert's. It was that of De Berquin.

I ran to the gate and heard him tell Maugert, who covered him with an arquebus, match lighted, that he was seeking the abode of the Sieur de la Tournoire, for whom he had important news.

"Let him come, Maugert!" I called from the gate.

I stepped back into the courtyard. At that moment Blaise came out of the château. Very soon De Berquin strode in through the gateway, followed by the burly Barbemouche. Both looked wayworn and fatigued.

"Monsieur de la Tournoire," said De Berquin, saluting me with fine grace and a pleasant air,--he never lost the ways of a gallant gentleman,--"I have come here to do you a service."

So! thought I, does he really intend to seek my confidence and try to betray me, after all? Admirable self-assurance!

I was about to answer, when Barbemouche put in;

"So you, whom it was in my power to kill a hundred times over that night, are the very Tournoire whom I chased from one end of France to the other eight years ago?" And he looked me over with a frank curiosity.

"Yes," I said, with a smile, "after you had destroyed the home of my fathers. And at last you have found me."

"I was but the servant of the Duke of Guise then," said Barbemouche.

At this point Blaise, who, in all our experiences with De Berquin and his henchmen, had not while sober come within hearing of Barbemouche's voice, or within close sight of him, stepped up and said, coolly:

"Let me see the face that goes with that voice."

And he threw up the front of Barbemouche's hat with one hand, at the same time raising the front of his own with the other. The two men regarded each other for a moment.

"Praise to the God of Israel, we meet again!" cried Blaise, in a loud voice, catching the other by the throat.

"Who are you?" demanded Barbemouche.

"The man on whom you left this mark,"--and Blaise pointed to his own forehead,--"in Paris on St. Bartholomew's night thirteen years ago."

"Then I did not kill you?" muttered Barbemouche, glaring fiercely at Blaise.

"God had further use for me," said Blaise.

De Berquin and I both stepped aside, perceiving that here was a matter in which neither of us was concerned. But we looked on with some interest, deferring until its adjustment our own conversation.

"Then it was you who spoiled my appearance for the rest of my days!" cried Barbemouche. "May you writhe in the flames of hell!"

And, being without sword or other weapon, he aimed a blow of the fist at Blaise's head. Blaise, disdaining to use steel against an unarmed antagonist, contented himself with dodging the blow and dragging Barbemouche to a place where an opening in the courtyard wall overlooked a steep, rocky descent which was for some distance without vegetation. Here the two men grappled. There was some hard squeezing, some quick bending either way, a final powerful forcing forward of the arms on the part of Blaise, a last violent propulsion of the same arms, and Barbemouche was thrown backward down the precipice. Blaise stood for a time looking oven. We heard a series of dull concussions, a sound of the flight of detached small stones, and then nothing.

"God giveth the battle to the strong!" said Blaise, and he came away from the precipice.

De Berquin shrugged his shoulders, and turned again to me.

"As I said, monsieur," he began, "I have come here to do you a service."

"Indeed!" said I, coldly, choosing to assume indifference and ignorance. "I knew not that I was in need of any."

"Your need of it is all the greater for that," said De Berquin, quietly. "Monsieur, I would hinder some one from doing you a foul deed, though to do so I must rob that person of your esteem."

"Speak clearly, M. de Berquin," said I, thinking that he was taking the wrong way to get my confidence. "It is impossible that any one having my esteem should need hindrance from a foul deed."

De Berquin stood perfectly still and looked me straight in the face, saying:

"Is it a foul deed to betray a man into the hands of his enemies?"

"Yes," said I, thoughtfully, wondering that he should try to begin that very act by accusing some one else of intending it.

"Then, monsieur," he went on, "look to yourself."

But I looked at him instead, with some amazement at the assurance with which he continued to face me.

"And what man of my following would you accuse of intending to betray me?" I asked.

"No man, monsieur," he said, still meeting my gaze steadily, and not changing his attitude.

"No man?" I repeated, for a moment puzzled. "Oh, ho! The boy, Pierre, perhaps, who left us while we were at the inn by the forest road! Well, monsieur, you speak falsely. I would stake my arm on his loyalty."

"It is not to tell you of any boy that I have sought you these many days in this wilderness," said De Berquin, all the time standing as motionless as a statue, and speaking in a very low voice. "It is not a boy that has come from M. de la Chatre, the governor of the province, to betray you."

"Not man nor boy," I said, curious now to learn what he was aiming at. "What, then? Mademoiselle's maid, honest Jeannotte? You must take the trouble to invent something else, M. de Berquin. You become amusing."

"Not the maid, monsieur," he replied, very quietly, putting a stress on the word "maid," and facing me as boldly as ever.

Slowly it dawned on me what he meant. Slowly a tremendous indignation grew in me against the man who dared to stand before me and make that accusation. Yet I controlled myself, and merely answered in a tone as low as his, but slowly drawing my sword:

"By God, you mean _her_!"

"Mlle. de Varion," he answered, never quailing.

Filled with a, great wrath, my powers of thought for the time paralyzed, my mind capable of no perception, but that of mademoiselle's sweetness and purity opposed to this horrible charge of black treason, I could answer only:

"Then the devil is no more the king of liars, unless you are the devil! Come, Monsieur de Berquin, I will show you what I think of the service you would do me!"

With drawn sword in hand, I walked across the courtyard and pointed to the way leading around the side of the château to an open space in one part of the garden. I knew that there we should not be interrupted.

As I waited for De Berquin to precede me, I chanced to look at Blaise. A strange, thoughtful expression was on his face. He, too, stood quite still.

De Berquin looked at my face for a moment longer, then seemed to realize the hopelessness of his attempt to make me credit his accusation, shrugged his shoulders and said, courteously:

"As you will, monsieur!"

And he walked before me around the side of the château to the bare space in the garden. Blaise, having received no orders, did not presume to follow.

We took off our doublets and other encumbrances, De Berquin raising his sheathed sword and very gracefully unsheathing by throwing the scabbard off into the air, so that it fell some distance away in the garden.

Twice before that night it had been shown that I was the more skilful swordsman, yet now he stood without the least sign of fear. If he had formerly retreated, on being disarmed, it was from situations in which he had figured ridiculously, and could not endure to remain before Mademoiselle de Varion. Also, he had sought to preserve his life, so that he might have revenge. But now that events had taken their turn, he showed himself not afraid to face death.

"It is a pity," I said, "that a brave man should be so great a liar."

"Rather," he said, "that so brave a man"--and his look showed that he alluded to me--"should be so easily fooled; and that so fair a woman should be so vile a traitor."

And, seeing that I was ready, he put himself into a posture of defence.

The cup of my resentment having been already filled to overflowing, it was impossible for me to be further angered by this. But there came on me a desire to let him know that I was not as ill-informed as he had thought me; that perhaps he was the greater fool. So, holding my sword lowered, I said:

"You should know, monsieur, that I am aware who undertook the task of betraying me to La Chatre."

"And yet you say that I lie," he replied.

"I know even how the matter was to be conducted," I went on. "The spy was first to learn my place of refuge and send the information to La Chatre. The governor was then to come to Clochonne. The governor is already at Clochonne. The spy, doubtless, learned where I hid, and sent word to La Chatre."

"Doubtless," he replied, impassively, "inasmuch as you speak of one of mademoiselle's boys having left you. He was probably the messenger."

"Monsieur," I said, "you desire to leave a slander of mademoiselle that may afflict me or her after your death; but your quickness to perceive circumstances that seemingly fit your lie will not avail you. A thousand facts might seem to bear out your falsehood, yet I would not heed them. I would know them to be accidental. For every lie there are many circumstances that may be turned to its support. So do not, in dying, felicitate yourself on leaving behind you a lie that will live to injure her or me. Your lie shall die with you."

"You tire me with reiterations, monsieur," he replied, calmly. "Since you will maintain that I have lied, do so. It is you who will suffer for your blindness, not I. I told you the truth, not really because I wished to do you a kindness, but because there was a chance of its serving my own purpose. The woman came here to find your hiding-place, and betray you to the governor. La Chatre engaged her to do so. His secretary, Montignac, took it into his head that he would like to become sole possessor of mademoiselle's time and attractions. But he could not undo the governor's plans, nor could he hope for the woman's cooperation, as she seems to have taken a dislike to him. It had been agreed that, when she had turned you over to the governor's soldiers, she should go to Fleurier to receive her reward. She had made this condition so that she might keep out of the way of Montignac. Now he dared not interfere to prevent her from doing the governor's errand, but he hoped to see more of her after that should be completed. Such, as it was necessary for him to tell me, was the state of his mind when I came along--I, ordered from court, hounded from Paris by creditors, ragged and ready for what might turn up. Near Fleurier Montignac turned up, in La Chatre's cavalcade. He wanted me to become the woman's escort to Clochonne, keep my eyes on her, know when she had settled your business, and, when she was about to start for Fleurier, keep her as his guest in a house that I was to hire in Clochonne. But why do I grow chilly telling you all this, when you do not intend to believe me? Shall we not begin, monsieur?"

"Doubtless you are vain of your skill at fabrication, monsieur," I said, wishing to deprive him of the satisfaction of thinking me deceived by his story, "but you have no reason to be. That a woman should be sent to betray an outlaw, and then a man sent to keep her in view and finally hold her,--it is complicated, to say the least. Why should you not have been sent to take me?" I thought that I had touched him here.

"That is what I asked Montignac," he replied. "But he told me that she had already been commissioned to hunt you down, before he had made up his mind to possess her by force. Moreover, it would not do to disturb the governor's plan, on which the governor was mightily set, though Montignac himself had suggested it. 'And,' said Montignac, 'you have not a woman's wit to find his hiding-place, or a woman's means of luring him from his men.' And yet, you will remember that when I thought you were a lackey, and you offered to deliver La Tournoire to me, I grasped at the chance, for I knew that, however set the governor might be on having the lady take you, he would be glad enough to have you taken by any one, and if I took you and got the reward I could afford to bear Montignac's displeasure. I think Montignac's desire to have the lady take you was due to his having suggested the plan. He wanted both the credit of having devised your capture and the pleasure of mademoiselle's society.

"Yes, when you held out to me the possibility, I was willing to risk Montignac's resentment and take La Tournoire myself. Before that, I had confined myself to the task of following mademoiselle. At first you and your supposed master were in my way. I had hoped to get her from you, and to obtain her esteem by the mock rescue, but this was spoiled first by my men and then by you. After that failure, I could merely follow and hope that chance would enable me to do Montignac's will."

"You cleverly mix truth and fiction, monsieur," I said. "You interest me. Go on."

It is true that he did interest me, so ingenious did I think his recital.

"I have no wish to prolong the life of one of us by this talk," he replied, "but a tale once begun should be finished. You know how you promised to deliver up La Tournoire to me. I grant that you kept the promise to the letter. During the rest of that night I lay quiet with my men. We heard your departure the next morning, and when the way was clear we followed in your track. We could do so quietly, for we were afoot; we had left our horses in another part of this wilderness the day before. We heard you greeted by your sentinel, and guessed that you were near your burrow.

"We came no further, but looked around and found a projecting rock, under which to lie hidden, and a tree from whose top this place could be seen. So we have lodged under the rock, one of us keeping watch night and day from the tree. I hoped thus to be able to know when you should be taken, so that I might then look to the lady. But no soldiers came for you, neither you nor the lady departed from the place, no sign came to indicate an attack or a flight. You can imagine, monsieur, how a gentleman accustomed to court pleasures and Parisian fare enjoyed the kind of life that we have been leading for these several days. Now and then one of us would crawl forth to a stream for water, or forage for nuts and berries, and we snared a few birds, which we had to eat raw, not daring to make a fire. This existence became tiresome. This afternoon three of my knaves deserted. What was I to do? It was useless to go back to Montignac without having done his work.

"To stay there awaiting your capture or the lady's departure was perhaps to starve. To go any distance from this place was to lose sight of the woman, who might leave at any time, and we could not know what direction she might take. The enterprise had been at best a scurvy one, fit only for a man at the end of his resources. In fine, monsieur, when the last of my men threatened to follow his comrades, I crawled out of my hole, stretched my aching bones, and resolved to let Montignac's business go to the devil. There was no chance for me in the service of the French King, therefore I came to offer myself as a member of your company. In the Huguenot cause I might earn back some of the good things of life.

"It no longer matters on which side I fight. 'Twas the same with Barbemouche. And, inasmuch as I had decided to cast in my fortunes with yours, I naturally wished you well. Thus it was my own interest I sought to serve, as well as yours, when I told you that this woman came here to betray you to La Chatre."

"You told me that," said I, calmly, "for one or both of two purposes,--the first, to make me withdraw my protection from the lady, in order that she might be at your disposal; the second, to get my confidence, in order that you yourself might betray me to La Chatre."

De Berquin laughed. "Am I, then, such a fool as to think that the wary Tournoire could be put off his guard by a man? No, no. The governor or Montignac was wise in choosing a woman for that delicate task. It is only by a Delilah that a Samson can be caught!"

"Monsieur," I said, with ironical admiration, "you are indeed as artful in your lies as you are bold. You have constructed a story that every circumstance seems to bear out. Yet one circumstance you have forgotten, or you are not aware of it. It destroys your whole edifice. The father of Mlle. de Varion is now a prisoner, held by the governor's order, on a charge of treason for having harbored Huguenots. Would his daughter undertake to do the work of a spy and a traitor for that governor against a Huguenot? Now for your ingenuity, monsieur!"

"Such things have been known," he answered, not at all discomfited. "His daughter may not have her father's weakness for Huguenots, and if she bears resentment against the governor on her father's account, her desire of the reward may outweigh that resentment. Covetousness is strong in women. You would not expect great filial devotion in a hired spy and traitress. Moreover, for all I know, this woman may not be Mile, de Varion, although Montignac so named her to me. She may have assumed that character at his suggestion, in order to get your confidence and sympathy, not daring to pretend to be a Huguenot, lest some habitual act might betray the deception."

"Enough, M. de Berquin," I said. "I do your wit the credit of admitting that so well-wrought a lie was never before told. Only two things prevent its being believed. It is to me that you tell it, and it is of Mile, de Varion! You complained a while ago of being chilly. Let us now warm ourselves!"

And so we went at it. I had no reason now to repeat the trick by which I had before disarmed him. Indeed, I wished him to keep sword in hand that I might have no scruples about killing him. I never could bring myself to give the death thrust to an unarmed man. Yet I was determined that the brain whence had sprung so horrible a story against my beloved should invent no more, that the lips which had uttered the accusation should not speak again.

Yet he gave me a hard fight. It was for his life that he now wielded sword, and he was not now taken by surprise as he had been in our former meetings, or unsteadied by a desire of making a great flourish before a lady. He now brought to his use all his training as a fencer. He had a strong wrist and a good eye, despite the dissolute life that he had led. For some minutes our swords clashed, our boots beat the ground, and our lungs panted as we fought in the moonlight. I was anxious to have the thing over quickly, lest the noise we made might reach the ears of mademoiselle, and perhaps bring her to the scene. I knew that Blaise would keep the men away, but he would not presume to restrain mademoiselle. I wished, too, to have the thrust made before my antagonist should begin to show weakness of body or uncertainty of eye. But he maintained a good guard, and also required me to give much time and attention to my own defence. Indeed, his point once passed through my shirt under my left shoulder, my left arm being then raised. But at last I caught him between two ribs as he was coming forward, and it was almost as though he had fallen on my sword. I missed his own sword only by quickly turning sidewise so that his weapon ran along the front of my breast without touching me.

He uttered one shriek, I drew my sword out of his body, and he fell in a limp heap. With a convulsive motion he straightened out and was still. I turned his body so that his face was towards the sky, and I went back to the courtyard, leaving him alone in the moonlight.

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