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

At the very moment when victory must have been his, he staggered, a black mist filming his eyes. The magic blade slipped from his grasp and clanged to the floor. He tried to save himself, but he could not. He fell by the side of his sword and lay there silent. His strength, had been superhuman, the last flare of a burnt-out fire.

"Good God, and I never touched him!" gasped, D'Hérouville. He was covered with a cold sweat. "A moment more and I had been a dead man!" He brushed his eyes, and his hand shook with a transient palsy.

There was a tableau: the aged noble stretched out beside his rapier, D'Hérouville leaning against the wall and wild-eyed . . . and a black-robed figure standing in the doorway.

"Have you killed him?" asked the black-robed figure, stepping into the room.

D'Hérouville gazed at him, incapable of speaking.

"Have you killed him, I say?" repeated Brother Jacques.

D'Hérouville choked, and presently found his voice. "I have not even touched him. God is witness! He has been stricken by a vapor, or he is dead."

"It is well for you, Monsieur, that your sword did not touch him. You had better go."

The count's hand shook so that he could hardly put his rapier into the scabbard. With a dazed glance at the marquis, who had not yet stirred, with another glance at the priest, he passed out, holding the flat of his hand against his side.

Immediately Brother Jacques bent over the fallen man.

"He lives; that is well. So I must go on to the end."

He poured out some wine and bathed the marquis's temples and wrists. Next he lifted the old man in his arms and carried him to the bed, undressed him, and covered him over. He drew a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, waiting and watching. Occasionally his glance wandered, to the sinking candles, to the moon outside, from the marbled face on the pillow to the empty wine-glass on the small table. Once he recollected seeing an envelope within a hand's span of the glass.

A duel! This palsied old man pressing youth and vigor to the wall! It seemed incredible. What must this man have been in his prime? Age vanquishing youth! A shiver ran across Brother Jacques's spine, a shiver of admiration and wonder. He touched the withered hand which had but a few moments since been endowed with marvelous skill and cunning and strength: it was icy and damp.

He filled the glass of wine, ready for the marquis's awakening, and again found his gaze entrapped by the envelope. His hand reached out for it absently and without purpose. He read the address indifferently-"To Monsieur le Marquis de Périgny, to be delivered into his hands at my death." The marquis, then, had lost some friend? He put back the letter, placing a book upon it to prevent its being swept to the floor.

There was a sound. The marquis had recovered his senses. He looked blankly around, at the candles, at Brother Jacques, at the sheets which covered his strangely deadened limbs.

"Ah! I have had only a bad dream, then? Pour me a glass of wine, and I shall sleep."


CHAPTER XXIV

SISTER BENIE AND A DISSERTATION ON CHARITY

Three days passed. At Orléans the settlers had had two or three brushes with marauding Mohawks. A letter from Father Chaumonot at the mission in Onondaga reported favorable progress. D'Hérouville was again out of hospital; and De Leviston had stolen quietly away to Montreal, where he was shortly to succumb to the plague. Only three persons knew of the remarkable conflict between the marquis and D'Hérouville: the son, Brother Jacques, and the Vicomte d'Halluys, who possessed that mysterious faculty of finding out many things of which the majority were unaware. As for the marquis, Brother Jacques fostered the belief that it had been only a wild dream.

Each morning Madame de Brissac watched with growing eagerness the lading of the good ship Henri IV. It seemed impossible to her that the deception in regard to the Chevalier could continue much longer. Where was the dénouement on which she had builded so fondly? She had put it off so many times that perhaps it was now too late. Sooner or later Victor would slip, and the mask would be at an end. And why not? Why not have done with a comedy which had grown stale? Why not tell Monsieur du Cévennes that she was Gabrielle Diane de Montbazon, she whose miniature he had crushed beneath the heel of his riding boot? Rather would she tell him than leave it to the offices of D'Hérouville or the vicomte. Surely her purpose had been to bring him to his knees and then laugh! Relent? Not while her cup still held a drop of pride. She had been mad indeed. To have come here to Quebec with purpose and impulse undefined! Daily she mocked her weakness. Truly she was the daughter of her mother, extravagant, unbalanced, blown hither and thither by caprice as a leaf is blown by an autumn wind.

The thought of him stirred her as nothing had ever before stirred her. It was hate, it was wounded pride crying out for vengeance, it was the barb of scorn urging her to give back in kind. And, heaven above! he had been on his knees, and she had dallied with the moment of revenge even as a cat dallies with a mouse. Diane! She detested the name. Fool! And yet, why was he here? What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes? Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another's secret. And the governor knew, D'Hérouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone. Love? A fillip of her finger for love! Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV. Such a way have the women.


Monsieur le Marquis lay in his bed, the bed from which he was to rise but once again in life. His thin fingers had drawn the coverlet closely under his chin, and from time to time they worked spasmodically. His head, scarce less white than the pillow beneath it, went on nodding from side to side, as if in perpetual negation to those puzzling questions which occupied his brain. His eyebrows were constantly bending, and his grey eyes burned with a fever which was never to be subdued. Across the foot of the bed lay a golden bar of morning sunlight.

"How long must I lie in this cursed bed?" he asked.

Brother Jacques left the window and came to the bedside. "Perhaps a month, Monsieur; it all depends upon your patience."

"Patience? I have little against my account. When does the Henri IV sail?"

"A week from to-day."

"In bed or on foot, I shall sail with it. I am weary of trees, and rocks, and water. I desire to see the cobbles of Rochelle and Périgny before I die. Have you no canary in this abominable land?"

"The physician denies you wine, Monsieur."

"And what does that fool know about my needs?" demanded the invalid, stirring his feet as if striving to cast aside the sunlight. "Draw the shutter; the sun bites into my eyes. I abhor sunshine in bed. I am seventy, and yet I have risen with the sun for more than sixty-five years. Have you any books?"

"Only of a religious and sacred character, and a volume of the letters of the Order." Brother Jacques offered these without confidence.

"Drivel! Find me something lively: Monsieur Brantôme, for instance. Surely Monsieur de Lauson has these memoirs in his collection."

"I shall make inquiries." Brother Jacques was not at ease.

A long pause ensued.

It was the marquis who broke it. "Why do you come and stand at the side of the bed and stare at me when you suppose I am sleeping? I have watched you, and it annoys me."

"I shall do so no more, Monsieur."

"But why?"

"Perhaps I was contemplating what a happiness it would be to bring about your salvation."

"Ah! I remember now. I told you that if ever I changed my mind regarding worship I should make my first confession to you. Yes, I remember distinctly. Well, Monsieur, you have still some time to wait. I am not upon my death-bed."

The priest turned aside his head.

"Eh? Has that fool of a blood-letter made an ante-mortem?"

"No, Monsieur. But the strongest and youngest of us retire each night, not knowing if we shall rise with the morrow. And you are more ill than you think. It is what they call the palsy. It can not be cured. But your soul may be saved. There is time."

"Palsy? Bah! The wine always stopped my head from wagging. And hang me if that dream of mine hasn't numbed my legs." The marquis held out a hand. "And in my dream I believed this hand to be holding a sword! It was a gallant fight, as I remember. I was Quixote, defending some fool-thing or other."

"Have you ever thought of the future, Monsieur?"

"Death? My faith, no! I have been too busy with the past. The past, the past!" and the marquis closed his eyes. "It walks beside me like a shadow. If I were not too old . . . I should regret . . . some of it."

"There is relief in confession."

"I have nothing to confess."

"Shall I seek Monsieur le Chevalier?"

"No. Do not disturb him. He has his affairs. He is busy becoming great and respected," ironically. "Besides, the sight of the stubborn fool would send me into spasms. After all the trouble I have taken for his sake! You do well to take the orders. You do not marry, and you have no ungrateful sons. It was not enough to confess that I lied to him; I must strain the buckles at my knees. But not yet."

"Lied?"

"Why, yes. I told him that he was . . . But what is it to you? He is a fool . . . like his father. To throw away a marquisate and the income of a prince! Curse this bed!" with sullen fury.

"Perhaps, Monsieur, the bed is of your own making."

"Ah! So we also indulge in irony? If this bed is of my own making, my mind was occupied with softer things. Would you not like the love of women, endless gold, priceless wines, and all that the world gives to the worldly? Come; what secret envy is yours, you who sleep on straw, in clammy cells, and dine on crusts?"

Brother Jacques went back to his window.