The Grey Cloak by Harold MacGrath (uplifting book club books .txt) 📕

. . What are you doing here in Rochelle?"

"I am here to command your immediate return to Paris."

"Paris? Body of Bacchus! but it is fine gratitude on your part to accept this mission. So his Eminence thinks that I shall be safer in the Bastille? What a compliment!"

"No, Paul. He wishes simply to exonerate you and return to you your privileges. Ah! how could you do it?"

"Do what?" sinking upon one of the benches and striving to put together his wine-befuddled thoughts.

"Take the brunt of a crime you supposed I had done?"

"Supposed? Come, now; you are laughing!"

"Word of honor: supposed I had done. It was not till a week ago that I learned what you had done. How I galloped back to Paris! It was magnificent of you; it was fine."

"But you? And that cloak which I lent to you?"

"Well, I was as little concerned as you, which I proved to Mazarin. I was at my sister's wedding at Blois. Your grey cloak was stolen from my room the day before De Brissac met his violent end. My lad, Hector, found the cloak in a tavern. How, he would not say. He dared not keep it, so sent it to the Candlestick in care of another lad. He understood that its disappearance might bring harm to you. I trounced him well for his carelessness in permitting the cloak to be stolen."

"This is all very unusual. Stolen, from you?" bewildered.

"Yes."

"And it was not you?"

"Am I a killer of old men? No, Paul. De Brissac and I were on excellent terms. You ought to know me better. I do not climb into windows, especially when the door is always open for me. I am like my sword, loyal, frank, and honest; we scorn braggart's cunning, dark alleys, stealth; we look not at a man's back but into his face; we prefer sunshine to darkness. And listen," tapping his sword: "he who has done this thing, be he never so far away, yet shall this long sword of mine find him and snuff his candle out."

"Good lad, forgive! I am drunk, atrociously drunk; and I have been drunk so long!" The Chevalier swept the hair out of his eyes. "Have you an enemy? Have I?"

"Enemies, enemies? If you but knew how I have searched my memory for a sign of one! The only enemy I could find was . . . myself. Here is your signet-ring, the one you pawned at Fontainebleau. You see, Mazarin went to the bottom of things."

The Chevalier slipped the ring on his finger, twirled it, and remained silent.

"Well?" said Victor, humorously.

"You never told me about Madame de Brissac." The Chevalier held the beryl of the ring toward the light and watched the flames dance upon its surface.

"Why should I have told you? I knew how matters stood between you and madame; it would have annoyed you. It was not want of confidence, Paul; it was diffidence. Are you sober enough to hear all about it now?"

"Sober? Well, I can listen." The Chevalier was but half awake mentally; he still looked at Victor as one would look at an apparition.

"So. Well, then," Victor began, "once upon a time there lived a great noble. He was valiant in wars and passing loves. From the age of eighteen to sixty, Mars nor Venus had withheld their favors. He was a Henri IV without a crown."

"Like that good father of mine," said the Chevalier, scowling.

"His sixtieth birthday came, and it was then he found that the garden of pleasure, that had offered so many charming flowers for his plucking, had drawn to its end. Behind, there were only souvenirs; before, nothing but barren fields. Suddenly he remembered that he had forgotten to marry. A name such as his must not sink into oblivion. He must have a wife, young and innocent. He did not seek love; in this his heart was as a cinder on a dead hearth. He desired an ornament to grace his home, innocence to protect his worldly honor. Strange, how these men who have tasted all fruits, the bitter and the sweet, should in their old age crave the companionship of youth and innocence. So he cast about. Being rich, he waived the question of any dowry save beauty and birth. A certain lady-in-waiting, formerly, to the queen, solved the problem for him. In a month her daughter would leave her convent, fresh and innocent as the dews of morning."

"O rare poet!" interrupted the Chevalier, with a droll turn of the head.

"This pleased the noble greatly. Men who have never found their ideals grow near-sighted at sixty. The marriage was celebrated quietly; few persons had ever heard of Gabrielle de Montbazon. Monsieur le Comte returned to Paris and reopened his hôtel. But he kept away from court and mingled only with those who were in disfavor. Among his friends he wore his young wife as one would wear a flower. He evinced the same pride in showing her off as he would in showing off a fine horse, a famous picture, a rare drinking-cup. Madame was at first dazzled; it was such a change from convent life. He kept wondrous guard over her the first year. He never had any young companions at the hôtel; they were all antique like himself. Paul, there is something which age refuses to understand. Youth, like a flower, does not thrive in dusty nooks, in dark cellars."

"How about mushrooms? They grow in cellars; and the thought of them makes my mouth water."

"Paul, you are unkind to laugh."

"Have I not told you that I am drunk? Go on."

"Well, then, youth is like a flower; it must have air and sunshine, the freedom of its graceful stem. Nature does not leap from May to December. The year culminates in the warm breath of summer. Youth culminates in the sunshine of love. The year bereft of summer is less mournful than youth deprived of love. So. A young girl, married to a man old enough to be her grandsire, misses the glory of her summer, the realization of her convent dreams. Gradually she comprehends that she has been cheated, cruelly cheated. What happens? She begins by comparing her husband who is old to the gallants who are young. This is but natural."

"And exciting," interpolated the Chevalier.

"By and by, the world as contrived by man shows her many loopholes through which she may pass without disturbing her conscience. Ah, but these steps are so imperceptible that one does not perceive how far one goes till one looks back to find the way closed. Behold the irony of fate! During the second year Monsieur le Comte falls in love with one of Scudery's actresses, and, commits all sorts of follies for her sake. Ah well, there were gallants enough. And one found favor in madame's eyes; at least, so it seemed to him. In the summer months they promenaded the gardens of La Place Royale, on the Cours de la Reine, always at dusk. When it grew colder this gallant, who was of a poetical turn of mind, read her verses from Voiture, Malherbe, or Ronsard . . ."

"Not to mention Saumaise," said the Chevalier.

"He was usually seated at her feet in her boudoir. Sometimes they discussed the merits of Ronsard, or a novel by the Marquis d'Urfe. On my word of honor, Paul, to kiss her hand was the limit of my courage. She fascinated; her eyes were pitfalls; men looked into them but to tumble in. Gay one moment, sad the next; a burst of sunshine, a cloud!"

"What! you are talking about yourself?" asked the Chevalier. "Poet that you are, how well you tell a story! And you feared to offend me? I should have laughed. Is she pretty?"

"She is like her mother when her mother was twenty: the handsomest woman in Paris, which is to say, in all France."

"And you love her?"

"So much as that your poet's neck is very near the ax," lowly.

"Eh? What's that?"

The poet glanced hastily about. There was no one within hearing. "I asked Mazarin for this mission simply because I feared to remain in Paris and dare not now return. Your poet put his name upon a piece of paper which might have proved an epic but which has turned out to be pretty poor stuff. This paper was in De Brissac's care; was, I say, because it was missing the morning after his death. To-morrow, a week or a month from now, Mazarin will have it. And . . ." Victor drew his finger across his throat.

"A conspiracy? And you have put your name to it, you, who have never been more serious than a sonnet? Were you mad, or drunk?"

"They call it madness. Madame's innocent eyes drew me into it. I've only a vague idea what the conspiracy is about. Not that madame knew what was going on. Politics was a large word to her, embracing all those things which neither excited nor interested her. Lord love you, there were a dozen besides myself, madame's beauty being the magnet."

"And the plot?"

"Mazarin's abduction and forced resignation, Condé's return from Spain and Gaston's reinstatement at court."

"And your reward?"

"Hang me!" with a comical expression, "I had forgotten all about that end of it. A captaincy of some sort. Devil take cabals! And madame, finding out too late what had been going on, and having innocently attached her name to the paper, is gone from Paris, leaving advice for me to do the same. So here I am, ready to cross into Spain the moment you set out for Paris. Mazarin has taken it into his head to imitate Richelieu: off with the head rather than let the state feed the stomach."

"So that is why De Beaufort, thinking me to be the guilty man, sought me out and demanded the paper? My faith, this grows interesting. But oh! wise poet, did you not hear me tell you never to sign your name to anything save poetry?"

"It might have been a poem . . . I wonder whither madame has flown? By the way, Mademoiselle de Longueville gave me a letter to give to you. It is unaddressed. I promised to deliver it to you."

The Chevalier took the letter and opened it carelessly; but no sooner did he recognize the almost illegible but wholly aristocratic pothooks than a fit of trembling seized him. The faint odor of vervain filled his nostrils, and he breathed quickly.


" Forgive! How could I have doubled so gallant a gentleman! You have asked me if I love you. Find me and put the question again. I leave Paris indefinitely. France is large. If you love me you will