In the blindness of his passion all his fine keenness was cast to the wind, his all-observing watchfulness was smothered in the cloud of anger that oppressed his brain. He never saw the sign that madame made to her son, never so much as noticed Marius’s stealthy progress towards the door.
“Oh,” he continued, a satirical note running now through his tempestuous voice, “it is a fine thing to cozen each other with honeyed words, with smirks and with grimaces. But we have done with that, madame.” He towered grimly above her, shaking a threatening finger in her very face. “We have done with that. We shall resort to deeds, instead.”
“Aye, monsieur,” she answered very coldly, sneering upon his red-hot fury, “there shall be deeds enough to satisfy even your outrageous thirst for them.”
That cold, sneering voice, with its note of threat, was like a hand of ice upon his overheated brain. It cooled him on the instant. He stiffened, and looked about him. He saw that Marius had disappeared, and that mademoiselle had risen and was regarding him with singularly imploring eyes.
He bit his lip in mortified chagrin. He cursed himself inwardly for a fool and a dolt—the more pitiable because he accounted himself cunning above others. Had he but kept his temper, had he done no more than maintain the happy pretence that he was a slave to the orders he had received—a mere machine—he might have gained his ends by sheer audacity. At least, his way of retreat would have remained open, and he might have gone, to return another day with force at his heels.
As it was, that pretty whelp, her son, had been sent, no doubt, for men. He stepped up to Valerie.
“Are you ready, mademoiselle?” said he; for little hope though he might still have of winning through, yet he must do the best to repair the damage that was of his making.
She saw that the storm of passion had passed, and she was infected by the sudden, desperate daring that prompted that question of his.
“I am ready, monsieur,” said she, and her boyish voice had an intrepid ring. “I will come with you as I am.”
“Then, in God’s name, let us be going.”
They moved together towards the door, with never another glance for the Dowager where she stood, patting the head of the hound that had risen and come to stand beside her. In silence she watched them, a sinister smile upon her beautiful, ivory face.
Then came a sound of feet and voices in the anteroom. The door was flung violently open, and a half-dozen men with naked swords came blundering into the room, Marius bringing up the rear.
With a cry of fear Valerie shrank back against the panelled wall, her little hands to her cheeks, her eyes dilating with alarm.
Garnache’s sword rasped out, an oath rattled from his clenched teeth, and he fell on guard. The men paused, and took his measure. Marius urged them on, as if they had been a pack of dogs.
“At him!” he snapped, his finger pointing, his handsome eyes flashing angrily. “Cut him down!”
They moved; but mademoiselle moved at the same moment. She sprang before them, between their swords and their prey.
“You shall not do it; you shall not do it!” she cried, and her face looked drawn, her eyes distraught. “It is murder—murder, you curs!” And the memory of how that dainty little lady stood undaunted before so much bared steel, to shield him from those assassins, was one that abode ever after with Garnache.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, in a quiet voice, “if you will but stand aside there will be some murder done among them first.”
But she did not move. Marius clenched his hands, fretted by the delay. The Dowager looked on and smiled and patted her dog’s head. To her mademoiselle now turned in appeal.
“Madame,” she exclaimed, “you’ll not allow it. You’ll not let them do this thing. Bid them put up their swords, madame. Bethink you that Monsieur de Garnache is here in the Queen’s name.”
Too well did madame bethink her of it. Garnache need not plague himself with vexation that his rash temper alone had wrought his ruin now. It had but accelerated it. It was just possible, perhaps, that suavity might have offered him opportunities; but, for the rest, from the moment that he showed himself firm in his resolve to carry mademoiselle to Paris, his doom was sealed. Madame would never willingly have allowed him to leave Condillac alive, for she realized that did she do so he would stir up trouble enough to have them outlawed. He must perish here, and be forgotten. If questions came to be asked later, Condillac would know nothing of him.
“Monsieur de Garnache promised us some fine deeds on his own account,” she mocked him. “We but afford him the opportunity to perform them. If these be not enough for his exceeding valour, there are more men without whom we can summon.”
A feeling of pity for mademoiselle—perhaps of no more than decency—now overcame Marius. He stepped forward.
“Valerie,” he said, “it is not fitting you should remain.”
“Aye, take her hence,” the Dowager bade him, with a smile. “Her presence is unmanning our fine Parisian.”
Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms, until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of a sudden dart of Garnache’s sword.
Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of the girl. Before they understood what he was about, the thing had taken place. He had leaped forward, caught the young man by the breast of his shimmering doublet, leaped back to shelter beyond mademoiselle, hurled Marius to the ground, and planted his foot, shod as it was in his thickly mudded riding-boot, full upon the boy’s long, shapely neck.
“Move so much as a finger, my pretty fellow,” he snapped at him, “and I’ll crush the life from you as from a toad.”
There was a sudden forward movement on the part of the men; but if Garnache was vicious, he was calm. Were he again to lose his temper now, there would indeed be a speedy end to him. That much he knew, and kept repeating to himself, lest he should be tempted to forget it.
“Back!” he bade them in a voice so imperative that they stopped, and looked on with gaping mouths. “Back, or he perishes!” And dropping the point of his sword, he lightly rested it upon the young man’s breast.
In dismay they looked to the Dowager for instruction. She craned forward, the smile gone from her lips, a horror in her eyes, her bosom heaving. A moment ago she had smiled upon mademoiselle’s outward signs of fear; had mademoiselle been so minded, she might in her turn have smiled now at the terror written large upon the Dowager’s own face. But her attention was all absorbed by the swiftly executed act by which Garnache had gained at least a temporary advantage.
She had turned and looked at the strange spectacle of that dauntless man, erect, his foot upon Marius’s neck, like some fantastic figure of a contemporary Saint George and a contemporary dragon. She pressed her hands tighter upon her bosom; her eyes sparkled with an odd approval of that brisk deed.
But Garnache’s watchful eyes were upon the Dowager. He read the anxious fear that marred the beauty of her face, and he took heart at the sight, for he was dependent upon the extent to which he might work upon her feelings.
“You smiled just now, madame, when it was intended to butcher a man before your eyes. You smile no longer, I observe, at this the first of the fine deeds I promised you.”
“Let him go,” she said, and her voice was scarce louder