The Maid of Honour: A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Volume 3 of 3

The individual who did not at all appreciate the sudden volte-face was, as may be imagined, Mademoiselle Brunelle. Fortune was in an elfish mood. For her mother's sake the marquise had tacitly permitted the brothers to resume the place they had once occupied, promising herself-when the visit was over-to hold them at arms' length again; but with Algaé it was different. On no pretence could she be permitted to join the circle. Indeed, it was hinted to her in a politely worded note that she was delaying her departure over long.

The abbé had declared that the marplot must be frightened away, and yet he was sparing no pains to make the visit pleasant. It was evident that he and his brother avoided their ally lest she should fall on them with just upbraiding. If she beheld them in the distance, it was but to see them whisking round a corner. Oblivious of feelings she was left alone to brood and mope; her meals were served apart as though she were infectious; and now she had received the curtest of summonses to make herself scarce forthwith. Oh! how she hated the lot of them!

In truth she was in a dilemma, and did not know what to do. Clovis had been got rid of while something was being done which might revolt his squeamish nature; and though he said nothing, she was certain that he had more than a vague suspicion of what was going forward. But supposing that nothing were to take place after all? Supposing that when he had raised the necessary sum, and called on the others to join him, they were to do so, and cross the frontier, leaving Gabrielle behind? What he was able to raise could not be very much, and one cannot live in luxury at Geneva or elsewhere on expectations. They would have to report that the marquise was charming well, instead of dead, and that, unmolested, she might live on for years. Why should she not, in their absence, make another will, or a dozen others, whereby even the shadowy expectations would be reduced to thinnest air?

Was the abbé scheming to gain time? It struck Algaé with a gush of impotent wrath that perchance the coming of the maréchale had been his own device, arranged so as to tide over the days until mademoiselle should have no excuse for lingering, that he might then have the heiress to himself! Perhaps his recently developed hatred of her was a snare to deceive the governess? If it turned out that this was so, what course would it behove her to pursue? Should she seem to accept her fate, drive quietly away, and joining Clovis, unfold the machinations of his brother? Would Clovis believe, and if he did, how would he act-he who had fullest confidence in his brother? Were the suspicions that racked her justified or not? Meanwhile, she was treated like a social Pariah, and the precious hours waned.

The abbé guessed her thoughts, and laughed. Women are so nimble witted that when they enter the labyrinth of scheming they frequently wander too far and lose themselves. Pharamond was quite as anxious to be rid of the old lady as the younger one could be, but he was far-seeing and cautious, while his coadjutor was culpably impatient.

It was one night when the family sat at supper in the boudoir that Toinon struck her blow. There had been a splendid bout of blind man's buff in the grand saloon. The cherubs had been seized by Toinon and carried off to bed, flushed, out of breath, and happy. The pursy chevalier, who had been very active, puffed and blew, and looked like to have a fit. Madame la Maréchale had been frisking after a fashion that surprised herself. The abbé mopped his face with a dainty kerchief, and flung himself at Gabrielle's feet, as in the departed days.

"You are our prisoner, maréchale," he cried gaily-"a prisoner for life in this ancient fortress, and shall never go hence alive. You add such a charm to our circle that we positively can't do without you. Is it not so, dear Gabrielle? Tell our mother that she is here for good."

Pharamond glanced up, with a yellow light glinting through half-closed lids, and lips drawn tightly over teeth: attitude and expression recalled vividly scenes she would gladly have forgotten, and Gabrielle, she knew not why, was frightened.

Toinon, re-entering, marked his familiar gesture and her lady's fear, and her gorge rose till she felt choking. A venomous, slimy snake was coiling itself about the feet of the marquise, fouling her with its tainted breath. The abnormal, loathsome reptile! Was he slowly to enwrap her in his glittering coils and crush her bones, while Toinon stood by, unaiding? Her brain in a whirl of indignation, the abigail blurted out, "For good or evil, which? You dare not poison her-that is a comfort-lest her domestics should report the fact."

The suddenness of the attack startled even Pharamond, while the maréchale stared bewildered, and Gabrielle turned a shade more pale. With anxious and surprised inquiry the marquise gazed at her foster-sister. What was this? Full well she knew of what the abbé was capable, and that her maid would not bring false charges.

The ice broken, Toinon felt better, refreshed as by a douche of water. Leaning against the door, hands firmly planted upon hips, she turned to the amazed maréchale and plainly told her tale. She told of the marquise's symptoms, of her own suspicion but too soon verified; of how she had found Jean's dog stretched dead upon the floor, with a green liquor running from its mouth; how by prompt action she had saved her mistress, who had luckily taken but a mouthful; how she had found the abbé in perfect health some hours after (if his tale were true), he had swallowed a strong dose of poison; how she, Toinon, had then sent for Madame de Brèze, that in the future she might shield her daughter.

Never in her whole life before had the poor old woman been placed in a position of responsibility, and she could only murmur in angry fear-"Why me-why send for me?" Indeed she was a ludicrous example of the broken reed, and the abbé waved airy thanks to Toinon with white fingers, in that she was so kindly playing into his hands.

"Why, indeed," he echoed, "if half were true of what that naughty minx accuses me. I poison our darling Gabrielle! The idea would be intensely comic if it were not offensive. It is a fact, madame, of which Gabrielle is well aware, that an accident occurred, owing to a scullion's carelessness. I myself nearly succumbed, for I had a desperate battle for life, and when I recovered, sent up a hymn of thanks to Heaven in that Gabrielle should have but suffered slightly."

"You knew so little of your poison that you assumed wrong symptoms!" remarked Toinon, in disdain.

"Not so. It is you who know not the poison," retorted Pharamond, with a malignant flash that was instantly suppressed. "Spite and fatuous ignorance misled you. The symptoms vary according to quantity imbibed. I unluckily ate a cake and half before I was aware of anything peculiar, and any doctor will tell you that whereas a small dose of subacetate of copper will produce coma, a large one will bring about griping pains and tetanic convulsions, which, without aid from above, lead to paralysis and death."

"A large dose acts on the system quickly-within an hour," scoffed the abigail. "When I told you that the cakes were poisoned you were in perfect health."

"I had but just partaken-"

"A clumsy liar! I asked Bertrand if he had more of his confectionery, and he answered with a searching look of suspicious inquiry that all he had made were served to the marquise."

"Upon my word, the wench is very erudite," laughed the abbé, lightly. "How come you to know so much?"

"There was an ancient book on poisons in the library. I turned up the article 'Copper,' and studied it."

"Was?"

"Yes, was. The book is hidden now where you will never find it."

There was a pause, during which the combatants studied each other warily. Then the abbé, shrugging his shoulders, in disgust drawled out, "Have we not had enough of this low comedy?"

"I ascertained," pursued the undaunted maiden, "that the necessary quantity of verdigris so to affect one little cake out of many as almost to produce coma in one who had taken a single bite must be so large that a copper cooking-plate would have to be thickly buttered with it. Now Bertrand excused himself on the plea that the plate in use was found to be 'not quite clean.' If he had buttered it then was your 'accident' not due to inadvertence."

"What proof have you that the cakes were so heavily loaded?"

"The fact that the dog died within half-an-hour; that I retained two which I intend presenting to madame that she may have them analysed in Paris."

"A pretty story, ingenious as wicked. No one saw the dog perish but yourself. What evidence is there, except your own, that the cakes in your possession are in the same condition as when placed on the table? Are you sure you have any cakes at all?"

There was such an air of mischievous satisfaction underlying the tone of banter that Toinon's heart stood still. "How are you sure-" she began, then sped swiftly from the room, to return in a few moments white as a sheet and breathless.

"They are gone," she panted, "gone! You discovered where they were concealed, you wicked man, and have destroyed them!"

The abbé rose leisurely from the floor and broke into a shout of laughter. "Dear ladies," he apologised, "you must forgive so vulgar a display of merriment, but the jest is too, too good. What subtle forms, nowadays, will not the malice of the enemy assume! Unfortunate noblesse! Unjust and cruel age! The inscrutable powers permit us to be hauled to prison, conducted to the shambles, but allow us to leave the world with characters unstained. The mob would trump up charges against us now to justify their deeds; but the charges are so shallow and so foolish that they defeat their ends. Poisoned cakes! Pah! Unhappy girl, you who have received a superior education should have soared above such folly. It was the rumour that spread from Paris about the king and queen and the poisoned food at the Tuileries that put this absurd notion in your head. Madame de Brèze, I grieve that so untoward an incident as this should have occurred during your stay among us, which we have all striven to make a pleasant one. We have kept it from you, but it is true, to our misfortune, that the spirit of the province is menacing. There is nothing that the peasants will not believe against an aristo. If you sallied forth and announced that I, the Abbé Pharamond, am specially partial to boiled baby, served aux choux, there is not one who would not believe you. This girl is betrothed to Jean Boulot, the gamekeeper, who deliberately left a respectable service to make himself notorious at Blois as the most rabid of all the Jacobins, and it is obvious that she acts now under his influence, regardless of long service under the marquise and of the many benefits received. Alack! the ingratitude of those who rend the hand that caresses them is very hard to bear."

"Madame, you do not believe him?" cried Toinon, throwing herself at Gabrielle's feet and anxiously searching her face. "You know that the man is lying!"

"Yes, I know," Gabrielle whispered as she bent to kiss her brow. "I know you have spoken truth, but we are powerless."

She leaned back, supporting her head wearily upon her arm, perfectly composed in demeanour, while Toinon, her face buried in her lap, sobbed as if her heart were breaking.

The aged Madame de Brèze turned from one to the other of the group, utterly mystified, with a growing grudge against some one, at present she could not tell whom. A gulf had suddenly yawned in front, and from its depths arose a faint sickening fume of death. Although she had a foot in the grave she mightily objected to the smell of death. Which of these two spoke truth? The dear delightful abbé could not have-oh, no, that was absurd and ridiculous, and yet why should Gabrielle sit so stonily with that woful look of pain? It was plainly her place to rise up and take his part, exonerate him at once from even the slightest shadow of this dreadful thing; at least to declare her conviction that the abigail was mad, was suffering from some unhealthy fancy. It was not the poor girl's fault. Were not current events a more than sufficient excuse for any amount of hysteria? And yet, Gabrielle was plainly not of her opinion. There was the accuser nestling her head upon her lap, and the gentle hand was stroking it in caress and not in chiding. Did Gabrielle-could Gabrielle be keeping secrets from her parent? Was it the old story of the unappreciated mentor?

The blessed maréchal, who was to be congratulated as out of the turmoil, had established a deplorable precedent in the matter of Madame de Brèze as an oracle. One of the pleasantest points of the present séjour was the consideration in which her words were held. Her views and opinions were treasured up, as they should be, like flies in amber. Could it-oh, no, horrid thought, it could not be-that Virginie, Maréchale de Brèze, aged, never mind how much, was deliberately being made a fool of? Much as she was disinclined to believe anything so preposterous, it did look extremely like it. The husband away, the brother-in-law was openly accused of attempting to murder his brother's wife, and that lady being present, made no sign except by affectionately caressing the accuser. Madame de Brèze did not like this new complexion of things at all. How she did and always had hated mysteries! Why will people be mysterious? Unless conscious of guilt, there is no cause for crawling in shadow. There could not be anything between Gabrielle and the abbé? Shocking idea! And yet in Paris such things often were. Could there also be something between the abbé and Toinon which rendered the latter jealous? Just like a woman, Madame de Brèze ambled off into the labyrinth of conjecture. growing each moment more involved in prickly briars, plunging about and tumbling down in pursuit of Will-o'-the-wisp.

When-Toinon's agitation calmed-everybody went to bed, and Gabrielle impressed on her mother's brow the chilly kiss of a statue, the maréchale shivered, and there and then resolved that Lorge was a hateful place fit only for owls and ghouls.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MADAME DE BRÈZE IS NERVOUS

That night Gabrielle and her foster-sister slept together, or rather lay in the same bed, for Toinon had much to tell and Gabrielle to hear. In the morning, the chatelaine looked much the same as usual, but for the circle of bistre round her eyes, which had grown deeper, giving an air of lassitude.

Virginie, Maréchale de Brèze, never slept a wink; but groaned and tossed in a fever, mumbling Ave Marias, and when she appeared at déjeuner, the abbé shook a reproachful finger at her. "Yellow!" he declared, mournfully, "absolutely and undeniably yellow! How dare you, after all our care, look so jaded, when yesterday you were as blooming as a rose? I know what it is. Try this pear-it absolutely melts in the mouth. No. I won't offer it, for I am afraid it smells of copper. Or is it brimstone? How provoking! I have tucked my hoofs and tail under my chair, but I cannot conceal the brimstone! Look at your lovely daughter. She knows better than to believe cancans, and has slept the sleep of the angels. Alas-dearest mother-you have permitted me to call you mother-I shall have to administer a severe and terrible lecture. I told you last night you were our prisoner, but I won't have birds that injure their delightful plumage. If you beat your wings against the bars I shall open the cage-door, I warn you, and dismiss you into space!"

Turned out into space among the ravening wolves without, or kept in the gilded cage to be slowly done to death? What an alternative! Why could not somebody tell her what to do, instead of leaving her all night stretched upon the rack of her uncertainty? Evidently, unless candidates for an asylum, they must all have some motive for acting in the odd way they did, but what was it? It was so rude and inconsiderate to be plotting, and scheming, and lying, and charging each other with all kinds of horrible offences, under the nose of an innocent stranger, of whom they were making a butt. Madame made up her mind to upbraid Gabrielle severely for her inhuman and unfilial conduct. If there was any nasty skeleton about, she had no business to summon an aged parent to contemplate it.

Toinon, plunged into a slough of anguish, could only wring her hands and moan. It is not every David who can get the better of Goliath; and is it not wiser to flee before the great towering monster, instead of hurling our puny stone at him-only to be trodden in a trice under his ponderous splay foot?

The abigail had got the worst of the encounter, her proofs as well as her accusation were rendered ridiculous, even in her own eyes, although she knew the accusation to be true. She was held up to obloquy as a Jacobin, one of the anarchists steeped to the lips in crime, ready to destroy by false witness the family to which she owed everything. Next, she would develop into a tricoteuse, sitting under shadow of the guillotine. It was intolerable. Toinon was not meek and lowly as some of her betters were. On the contrary, there ran through her veins a current of pugnacity of which honest Jean had tasted. She was not prepared to sit down like Gabrielle, wearing a crown of thorns and bearing a cross, the while pretending to enjoy them. Certainly not. She was one of those who have no respect for crowns of thorns, and consider crosses irksome wear. But what could she do to unwind her mistress and herself from the present tangle? The maréchale was an imbecile old doll. The abject terror of her mien last night had something about it that was full of pathos. It is pitiful to see so battered and helpless a thing as that in the bubbling whirlpool of our world. Jean-Jean Boulot was the one rock to which the two women might cling in their danger. Jean must leave his Jacobin clubs and come to them. Would it be well for Toinon herself to proceed to Blois, seek him out, and explain? He would not think her forward and unmaidenly, for she would find words to convince him as she had her mistress. No. The maréchale having proved herself to be a broken reed, it would not do to go to Blois, for her mistress would be left with no rampart, however unsatisfactory and weak, between herself and the insidious foe. What if, on her return, she were to find that the deed was accomplished? Jean must be written to, and implored by the past to come to the rescue of two women in grievous peril. And they were in extreme danger; he would see that for himself when he arrived. Toinon knew it full well. She had read the abbé's eyes last night, and was as much aware as Gabrielle, that for those who stood athwart his path, there was no more mercy within his breast than conscience or religion.

Poor Madame de Brèze! Yellow, forsooth! The more she pondered the more troubled she became. Her wrinkled old face was turning green. Was the abbé a monster or an angel? If only somebody would clear up this point. He made her blood run cold with his facetiousness, for is it not creepy to be openly informed by a person, that he wears a tail and hoofs, and to be more than half assured that it is true? He danced round her fears with elfin gambols, till she felt her frail wits tottering; and then, grown of a sudden serious, he would relate what he called facts, which only increased her terrors. Why had no one informed her before that Madame de Vaux hardly, and her daughter Angelique, were practically in a state of siege; that various chateaux in the neighbourhood had been demolished, their inhabitants drowned or strangled; that she had not been wrong on her way thither, as to the threatening attitude of the peasantry? Of course, she had been right-was she not always right though people would not believe her? She had been lured hither to this dismal fortalice to perish like a rat in a trap. Danger from without and from within. Goodness gracious! What if that story of the cakes were true? Gabrielle, strangely enough, seemed to consider that it was neither new nor surprising that her life should be in peril. What should they want to kill her for? Was it something connected with money? All evil springs from that. Then a thrill of horror surged over the selfish heart of the unlucky dame, when she remembered her daughter's will. To her, the old mother, the money was bequeathed-in trust, it is true; but to her. If they wished to compass Gabrielle's death, of course, her own would follow. What a silly will it was. She protested at the time, but had been overruled by M. Galland. It was an absurd thing for a young woman to bequeath a fortune to an old one-worse-it was a cruel and dastardly thing to do, if unscrupulous schemers were after it. Why must they mix up a harmless and venerable and justly respected lady in their plots and squabbles? Madame de Brèze worked herself up into a white heat of indignation, and set herself to see how she could get out of the trap with promptitude, and such decency as might be.

She propounded her views to Gabrielle, who gravely and calmly aquiesced. "Nothing detains you here, dear mother," she kept repeating, with monotonous persistency, "except your own fancy. I hoped you had taken to our quiet life; but if not, it is better you should go."

"I have so few years left to live, you know," apologetically whimpered the maréchale, "that I grudge the time away from entrancing Paris."

When her daughter elected courteously to consider that this was natural, her conscience pricked, and she was annoyed at feeling ashamed. Indeed, the excuse was of the lamest, since the beloved capital was, at this juncture, a prey to devils whose goddess was Mother Guillotine. In the retirement of her secluded dwelling, however, she could feel comparatively safe. She quite longed for the little house, which she was always complaining of as dismal. At all events, she could nibble a cake there without dread of poison.

"I will stay, of course, if you say you really wish it," she went on, plaintively, as salve to the inner monitor, "but the air of Touraine never did agree with me any more than with your blessed father; and if I were to be taken ill, I should only be an extra worry."

A smile flitted over the sad face of the marquise, as she took her mother's hands and kissed them. "My dear," she said, "I would not have you stay for worlds a moment longer than you fancy. Go back to Paris, and I will pray Heaven that your journey may be prosperous. I would like you to go at once, because I am sure it is for the best, since you are nervous, and at the same time I would beg of you a favour. Take the children with you, for I should feel happier if they were safe under your care. I will give orders now," she added, rising briskly, "in order that they may be ready by to-morrow."

The old lady ruefully rubbed her nose with her spectacles, being ashamed to speak her thoughts. It occurred to her that if the abbé really was nourishing designs of a nefarious nature, he might endeavour to prevent her from departing. If she proposed to remove the children, there would be extra inducement to interfere, considering the uncomfortable prominence given to all three by that deplorably ill-advised testament. Gabrielle had kept her lips sealed with regard to the second document. Indeed, she was unaccountably and provokingly reticent on most points in her dealings with the maréchale, who resented her silence hotly. She never could be got to talk of her affairs-to give an opinion as to the characters of Pharamond or of Phebus; declined to discuss the absence of her husband, or to explain the presence of the quondam governess, who, from time to time, was meteorically visible, hovering. Under the circumstances, what object would be gained by lingering at Lorge, since all seemed alike agreed to withhold from the sage their confidence? If she were allowed, she would gladly turn her back on the ill-omened place, and thank her stars when quit of it.