IN WHICH MAURICE RECURS TO OFFENBACH
Midnight; the music had ceased, and the yellow and scarlet lanterns had been plucked from the autumnal hangings.The laughing, smiling, dancing women, like so many Cinderellas, had disappeared, and with them the sparkle of jewels; and the gallant officers had ridden away to the jingle of bit and spur.
Throughout the courtly revel all faces had revealed, besides the happiness and lightness of spirit, a suppressed eagerness for something yet to come, an event surpassing any they had yet known.
Promptly at midnight Madame herself had dropped the curtains on the gay scene because she had urgent need of all her military household at dawn, when a picture, far different from that which had just been painted, was to be limned on the broad canvas of her dreams.Darkness and quiet had fallen on the castle, and the gray moon film lay on terrace and turret and tile.
In the guardroom, Maurice, his hands and feet still in pressing cords, dozed in his chair.He had ceased to combat drowsiness.
He was worn out with his long ride, together with the chase of the night before; and since a trooper had relieved his mouth of the scarf so that he could breathe, he cared not what the future held, if only he might sleep.It took him a long time to arrive at the angle of comfort; this accomplished, he drifted into smooth waters.The troopers who constituted his guard played cards at a long table, in the center of which were stuck half a dozen bayonets, which served as candlesticks.They laughed loudly, thumped the board, and sometimes sang.No one bothered himself about the prisoner, who might have slept till the crack of doom, as far as they were concerned.
Shortly before the new hour struck, the door opened and shut.Atrooper shook the sleeper by the sleeve.Maurice awoke with a start and gazed about, blinking his eyes.Before him he discovered Madame the duchess, Fitzgerald and Mollendorf, behind whom stood the Voiture-verse of a countess.The languor forsook him and he pulled himself together and sat as upright as his bonds would permit him.Something interesting was about to take place.
Madame made a gesture which the troopers comprehended, and they departed.Fitzgerald, with gloomy eyes, folded his arms across his breast, and with one hand curled and uncurled the drooping ends of his mustache; the Colonel frowned and rubbed the gray bristles on his upper lip; the countess twisted and untwisted her handkerchief; Madame alone evinced no agitation, unless the perpendicular line above her nose could have been a sign of such.
This lengthened and deepened as her glance met the prisoner's.
He eyed them all with an indifference which was tinctured with contempt and amusement.
"Well, Monsieur Carewe," said Madame, coldly, "what have you to say?""A number of things, Madame," he answered, in a tone which bordered the insolent; "only they would not be quite proper for you to hear."The Colonel's hand slid from his lip over his mouth; he shuffled his feet and stared at the bayonets and the grease spots on the table.
"Carewe," said Fitzgerald, endeavoring to speak calmly, "you have broken your word to me as a gentleman and you have lied to me."The reply was an expressive monosyllable, "O!""Do you deny it?" demanded the Englishman.
"Deny what?" asked Maurice.
"The archbishop," said Madame, "assumed the aggressive last night.To be aggressive one must possess strength.Monsieur, how much did he pay for those consols? Come, tell me; was he liberal? It is evident that you are not a man of business.Ishould have been willing to pay as much as a hundred thousand crowns.Come; acknowledge that you have made a bad stroke." She bent her head to one side, and a derisive smile lifted the corners of her lips.
A dull red flooded the prisoner's cheeks."I do not understand you.""You lie!" Fitzgerald stepped closer and his hands closed menacingly.
"Thank you," said Maurice, "thank you.But why not complete the melodrama by striking, since you have doubled your fists?"Fitzgerald glared at him.
"Monsieur," interposed the countess, "do not forget that you are a gentleman; Monsieur Carewe's hands are tied.""Unfortunately," observed Maurice.
Madame looked curiously at the countess, while Fitzgerald drew back to the table and rested on it.
"I can not comprehend how you dared return," Madame resumed.
"One who watches over my affairs has informed me of your dishonorable act.""What do you call a dishonorable act?" Maurice inquired quietly.
"One who breaks his sacred promise!" quickly.
The prisoner laughed maliciously.Madame had answered the question as he hoped she would."Chickens come home to roost.
What do you say to that, my lord?" to the Englishman.
This time it was not the prisoner's cheeks which reddened.Even Madame was forced to look away, for if this reply touched the Englishman it certainly touched her as deeply.Incidentally, she was asking herself why she had permitted the Englishman to possess her lips, hers, which no man save her father had ever possessed before.A kiss, that was all it had been, yet the memory of it was persistent, annoying, embarrassing.In the spirit of play--a spirit whose origin mystified her--she had given the man something which she never could regain, a particle of her pride.
Besides, this was not all; she had in that moment given up her right to laugh at him when the time came; now she would not be able to laugh.She regretted the folly, and bit her lip at the thought of it.Consequences she had laughed at; now their possibilities disturbed her.She had been guilty of an indiscretion.The fact that the Englishman had ruined himself at her beck did not enter her mind.The hour for that had not yet arrived.
