The Trampling of the Lilies Part 26

La Boulaye remained a moment by the door after Cecile's departure; then he moved away towards his desk, striving to master the tumultuous throbbing of his pulses. His eye alighted on Cecile's roses, and, scarce knowing why he did it, he picked them up and flung them behind a bookcase. It was but done when again the door opened, and his official ushered in Mademoiselle de Bellecour.

Oddly enough, at sight of her, La Boulaye grew master of himself. He received her with a polite and very formal bow--a trifle over-graceful for a patriot.

"So, Citoyenne," said he, and so cold was his voice that it seemed even tinged with mockery, "you are come at last."

"I could not come before, Monsieur," she answered, trembling. "They would not let me." Then, after a second's pause: "Am I too late, Monsieur?" she asked.

"No," he answered her. "The ci-devant Vicomte d'Ombreval still lies awaiting trial. Will you not be seated?"

"I do not look to remain long."

"As you please, Citoyenne. I have delayed Ombreval's trial thinking that if not my letter why then his might bring you, sooner or later, to his rescue. It may interest you to hear," he continued with an unmistakable note of irony, "that that brave but hapless gentleman is much fretted at his incarceration."

A shadow crossed her face, which remained otherwise calm and composed --the beautiful, intrepid face that had more than once been La Boulaye's undoing.

"I am glad that you have waited, Monsieur. In so doing you need have no doubts concerning me. M. d'Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now."

La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.

"Upon my soul," he said at last, a note of ineffable sarcasm vibrating in his voice, "I shall never cease to admire the effrontery of your cla.s.s, and the coolness with which, in despite of dishonourable action, you make high-sounding talk of honour and the things to which it binds you. I have a dim recollection, Citoyenne, of something uncommonly like your troth which you plighted me one night at Boisvert. But so little did that promise bind you that when I sought to enforce your fulfilment of it you broke my head and left me to die in the road."

His words shook her out of her calm. Her bosom rose and fell, her eyes seemed to grow haggard and her hands were clasped convulsively.

"Monsieur," she answered, "when I gave you my promise that night I had every intention of keeping it. I swear it, as Heaven is my witness."

"Your actions more than proved it," he said dryly.

"Be generous, Monsieur," she begged. "It was my mother prevailed upon me to alter my determination. She urged that I should be dishonoured if I did not."

"That word again!" he cried. "What part it plays in the life of the n.o.blesse. All that it suits you to do, you do because honour bids you, all to which you have bound yourselves, but which is distasteful, you discover that honour forbids, and that you would be dishonoured did you persist. But I am interrupting you, Citoyenne. Did your mother advance any arguments?"

"The strongest argument of all lay here, in my heart, Monsieur," she answered him, roused and hardened by his scorn. "You must see that it had become with me a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Upon reflection I discovered that I was bound to two men, and it behoved me to keep the more binding of my pledges."

"Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval," he said, and his voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in which she had found herself.

She inclined her head a.s.sentingly.

"To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my own cla.s.s whilst you--"

"Spare me, Citoyenne," he cried. "I know what you would say. I am of the rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had thought that ere now such notions had died out with you, and that, stupid enough though your cla.s.s has proved itself, it would at least have displayed the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set." He turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. "The Lilies of France have been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime, and yet it seems that you others of the n.o.blesse have not learnt your lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes less. Enfin!" he ended brusquely. "This is not the National a.s.sembly, and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal rather with the business upon which you are come."

She eyed him out of a pale face, with eyes that seemed fascinated. That short burst of the fiery eloquence that had made him famous revealed him to her in a new light: the light of a strength and capacity above and beyond that which, already, she had perceived was his.

"Will you believe, Monsieur, that it cost me many tears to use you as I did? If you but knew--" And there she paused abruptly. She had all but told him of the kiss that she had left upon his unconscious lips that evening on the road to Liege. "Mon Dieu how I hated myself!" And she shuddered as she spoke.

He observed all this, and with a brusqueness that was partly a.s.sumed he hastened to her rescue.

"What is done is done, Citoyenne. Come, let us leave reminiscences. You are here to atone, I take it."

At that she started. His words reminded her of those of his letter.

"Monsieur La Boulaye--"

"If it is all one to you, Citoyenne, I should prefer that you call me citizen."

"Citizen, then," she amended. "I have brought with me the gems which I told you would const.i.tute my dowry. In his letter to me the Vicomte suggested that--" She paused.

"That some Republican blackguard might be bribed," he concluded, very gently.

His gentleness deceived her. She imagined that it meant that he might not be unwilling to accept such a bribe, and thereupon she set herself to plead with him. He listened dispa.s.sionately, his hands behind his back, his eyes bent upon her, yet betraying nothing of his thoughts. At last she brought her prayer for Ombreval's life to an end, and produced a small leather bag which she set upon the table, beseeching him to satisfy himself as to the value of the contents.

Now at last he stirred. His face grew crimson to the roots of his hair, and his eyes seemed of a sudden to take fire. He seized that little bag and held it in his hand.

"And so, Mademoiselle de Bellecour," said he, in a concentrated voice, "you have learnt so little of me that you bring me a bribe of gems. Am I a helot, that you should offer to buy my very soul? Do you think my honour is so cheap a thing that you can have it for the matter of some bits of gla.s.s? Or do you imagine that we of the new regime, because we do not mouth the word at every turn, have no such thing as honour? For shame!" He paused, his wrath boiling over as he sought words in which to give it utterance. And then, words failing him to express the half of what was in him, he lifted the bag high above his head, and hurled it at her feet with a force that sent half the glittering contents rolling about the parquet floor. "Citoyenne, your journey has been in vain. I will not treat with you another instant."

She recoiled before his wrath, a white and frightened thing that but an instant back had been so calm and self-possessed. She gave no thought to the flas.h.i.+ng jewels scattered about the floor. Through all the fear that now possessed her rose the consideration of this man--this man whom she had almost confessed half-shamedly to herself that she loved, that night on the Liege road; this man who at every turn amazed her and filled her with a new sense of his strength and dignity.

Then, bethinking her of Ombreval and of her mission, she took her courage in both hands, and, advancing a step, she cast herself upon her knees before Caron.

"Monsieur, forgive me," she besought him. "I meant you no insult. How could I, when my every wish is to propitiate you? Bethink you, Monsieur, I have journeyed all the way from Prussia to save that man, because my hon--because he is my betrothed. Remember, Monsieur, you held out to me the promise in your letter that if I came you would treat with me, and that I might buy his life from you."

"Why, so I did," he answered, touched by her humiliation and her tears.

"But you went too fast in your conclusions."

"Forgive me that. See! I am on my knees to you. Am I not humbled enough?

Have I not suffered enough for the wrong I may have done you?"

"It would take the sufferings of a generation to atone for the wrongs I have endured at the hands of your family, Citoyenne."

"I will do what you will, Monsieur. Bethink you that I am pleading for the life of the man I am to marry."

He looked down upon her now in an emotion that in its way was as powerful as her own. Yet his voice was hard and sternly governed as he now asked her,

"Is that an argument, Mademoiselle? Is it an argument likely to prevail with the man who, for his twice-confessed love of you, has suffered sore trials?"

He felt that in a way she had conquered him; his career, which but that day had seemed all-sufficing to him, was now fallen into the limbo of disregard. The one thing whose possession would render his life a happy one, whose absence would leave him now a lasting unhappiness, knelt here at his feet. Forgotten were the wrongs he had suffered, forgotten the purpose to humble and to punish. Everything was forgotten and silenced by the compelling voice of his blood, which cried out that he loved her.

He stooped to her and caught her wrists in a grip that made her wince.

His voice grew tense.

"If you would bribe me to save his life, Suzanne, there is but one price that you can pay."

"And that?" she gasped her eyes looking up with a scared expression into his masterful face.

"Yourself," he whispered, with an ardour that almost amounted to fierceness.

She gazed a second at him in growing alarm, then she dragged her hands from his grasp, and covering her face she fell a-sobbing.