A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac by - (best love novels of all time .txt) 📕

She fell back with a sigh of relief, and a little colour came into her wan face. But her eyes still dwelt curiously, and with apprehension, on mademoiselle, who stood looking sullenly into the fire; and seeing this my heart misgave me sorely that I had done a foolish thing in bringing the girl there. I foresaw a hundred questions which would be asked, and a hundred complications which must ensue, and felt already the blush of shame mounting to my cheek.

‘Who is that?’ my mother asked softly. ‘I am ill. She must excuse me.’ She pointed with her fragile finger to my companions.

I rose, and still keeping her hand in mine, turned so as to face the hearth. ‘This, madame,’ I answered formally, ‘is Mademoiselle—, but her name I will commit to you later, and in private. Suffice it to say that she is a lady of rank, who has been committed to my charge by a high personage.’

‘A high personage?’ my mother repeated gently, glancing at me with a smile of gratification.

‘One of the highest,’ I said, ‘Such a charge being a great honour to me, I felt that I could not better execute it madame, since we must lie in Blois one night, than by requesting your hospitality on her behalf.’

I dared mademoiselle as I spoke—I dared her with my eye to contradict or interrupt me. For answer, she looked at me once, inclining her head a little, and gazing at us from under her long eyelashes. Then she turned back to the fire, and her foot resumed its angry tapping on the floor.

‘I regret that I cannot receive her better,’ my mother answered feebly. ‘I have had losses of late. I—but I will speak of that at another time. Mademoiselle doubtless knows,’ she continued with dignity, ‘you and your position in the south too well to think ill of the momentary straits to which she finds me reduced.’

I saw mademoiselle start, and I writhed under the glance of covert scorn, of amazed indignation, which she shot at me. But my mother gently patting my hand, I answered patiently, ‘Mademoiselle will think only what is kind, madame—of that I am assured. And lodgings are scarce to-night in Blois.’

‘But tell me of yourself, Gaston,’ my mother cried eagerly; and I had not the heart, with her touch on my hand, her eyes on my face, to tear myself away, much as I dreaded what was coming, and longed to end the scene. ‘Tell me of yourself. You are still in favour with the king of—I will not name him here?’

‘Still, madame,’ I answered, looking steadily at mademoiselle, though my face burned.

‘You are still—he consults you, Gaston?’

‘Still, madame.’

My mother heaved a happy sigh, and sank lower in the bed. ‘And your employments?’ she murmured, her voice trembling with gratification. ‘They have not been reduced? You still retain them, Gaston?’

‘Still, madame,’ I answered, the perspiration standing on my brow, my shame almost more than I could bear.

‘Twelve thousand livres a year, I think?’

‘The same, madame.’

‘And your establishment? How many do you keep now? Your valet, of course? And lackeys—how many at present?’ She glanced, with an eye of pride, while she waited for my answer, first at the two silent figures by the fire, then at the poverty-stricken room; as if the sight of its bareness heightened for her the joy of my prosperity.

She had no suspicion of my trouble, my misery, or that the last question almost filled the cup too full. Hitherto all had been easy, but this seemed to choke me. I stammered and lost my voice. Mademoiselle, her head bowed, was gazing into the fire. Fanchette was staring at me, her black eyes round as saucers, her mouth half-open. ‘Well, madame,’ I muttered at length, ‘to tell you the truth, at present, you must understand, I have been forced to—’

‘What, Gaston?’ Madame de Bonne half rose in bed. Her voice was sharp with disappointment and apprehension; the grasp of her fingers on my hand grew closer.

I could not resist that appeal. I flung away the last rag of shame. ‘To reduce my establishment somewhat,’ I answered, looking a miserable defiance at mademoiselle’s averted figure. She had called me a liar and a cheat—here in the room! I must stand before her a liar and a cheat confessed. ‘I keep but three lackeys now, madame.’

Still it is creditable,’ my mother muttered thoughtfully, her eyes shining. ‘Your dress, however, Gaston—only my eyes are weak—seems to me—’

‘Tut, tut! It is but a disguise,’ I answered quickly.

‘I might have known that,’ she rejoined, sinking back with a smile and a sigh of content. ‘But when I first saw you I was almost afraid that something had happened to you. And I have been uneasy lately,’ she went on, releasing my hand, and beginning to play with the coverlet, as though the remembrance troubled her. ‘There was a man here a while ago—a friend of Simon Fleix there—who had been south to Pau and Nerac, and he said there was no M. de Marsac about the Court.’

‘He probably knew less of the Court than the wine-tavern,’ I answered with a ghastly smile.

‘That was just what I told him,’ my mother responded quickly and eagerly. ‘I warrant you I sent him away ill-satisfied.’

‘Of course,’ I said; ‘there will always be people of that kind. But now, if you will permit me, madame, I will make such arrangements for mademoiselle as are necessary.’

Begging her accordingly to lie down and compose herself—for even so short a conversation, following on the excitement of our arrival, had exhausted her to a painful degree—I took the youth, who had just returned from stabling our horses, a little aside, and learning that he lodged in a smaller chamber on the farther side of the landing, secured it for the use of mademoiselle and her woman. In spite of a certain excitability which marked him at times, he seemed to be a quick, ready fellow, and he willingly undertook to go out, late as it was, and procure some provisions and a few other things which were sadly needed, as well for my mother’s comfort as for our own. I directed Fanchette to aid him in the preparation of the other chamber, and thus for a while I was left alone with mademoiselle. She had taken one of the stools, and sat cowering over the fire, the hood of her cloak drawn about her head; in such a manner that even when she looked at me, which she did from time to time, I saw little more than her eyes, bright with contemptuous anger.

‘So, sir,’ she presently began, speaking in a low voice, and turning slightly towards me, ‘you practise lying even here?’

I felt so strongly the futility of denial or explanation that I shrugged my shoulders and remained silent under the sneer. Two more days—two more days would take us to Rosny, and my task would be done, and Mademoiselle and I would part for good and all.