II
But right through the wild medley of hypotheses which ran riot in de Landas' mind there raged also furious, unbridled wrath—wrath at his own humiliation, his own impotence—hatred against the man who had brought him to this pass, and mad, ungovernable jealousy whenever his thoughts turned to Jacqueline.
Somehow—it was only instinct, no doubt—he felt that all this pother about the masked stranger centred round the personality of Jacqueline. The first hint which Monseigneur had of last night's affray must of necessity have come from Jacqueline. She alone was there—varlets and wenches did not count—she alone could have a personal interest in putting Monseigneur on the scent.
A personal interest? De Landas' frown became dark and savage when first that possibility rose before his mind. He had ordered his servants, very curtly, to go and wait for him in the main entrance hall, for after his interview with the governor he felt the want of being alone for a few moments, to think over the situation as it so gravely affected him. He was in the same corridor where a couple of hours ago Jacqueline had waylaid and spoken with Messire Gilles de Crohin. On his right was the row of tall windows with their deep embrasures, which gave view upon the park. De Landas felt sick and fatigued, as much from choler and nerve-strain as from the effect of his wounds, and he sat down on one of the wide window-seats to think matters over.
A personal interest?
Yes! That was it. Jacqueline, capricious, hot-headed, impulsive, had been attracted by the mysterious personality of the stranger, and for the moment was forgetting the lover of her youth, the man who felt that he had an inalienable claim upon her allegiance. De Landas had heard rumours of a masked minstrel having serenaded Madame beneath her windows. Pierre, his own henchman, had received a broad hint to that effect from Nicolle, who was Madame's waiting-woman. Was it possible that the masked troubadour and the enigmatic Prince de Froidmont were one and the same person? and was it likely that Jacqueline's romantic fancy had been captured by his wiles?
A wild, unreasoning rage gripped at de Landas' heart at the thought: sheer physical pain caused him to groan aloud. He felt stifled and giddy, and with a rough, impatient gesture, he threw open the casement-window and leaned out, in order to inhale the pure, fresh air which rose from the park. As he did so, he caught sight of Jacqueline, who was wandering in and among the bosquets, attended only by one of her maids. She was dressed in a dark gown and had a hood over her head, but even thus garbed she looked adorable, and de Landas muttered an angry oath as he looked down on her, watching her sedate movements, the queenly walk, that quaint air of demureness and dignity which became her so well. He suddenly realized all that the past few days—nay! weeks—had meant in the shaping of his destiny. Monseigneur the governor's stern decree had already placed her out of his reach; she was slipping away from him, dragged from his side by her accession to wealth and power, by the political intrigues which centred around her—aye! and she was also slipping away from him through the gradual cooling of her attachment for him; that fact he could no longer disguise from himself. He had succeeded in winning her, when she was so young and so inexperienced that she fell readily enough—almost unconsciously—into his arms. He had ensnared her like the skilful fowler succeeds in trapping a fledgling unawares. Since then, so many things had changed. Jacqueline, from an obscure little country wench—almost the handmaid of an adulated brother—had become one of the most important personages in the land. She was fêted, courted, admired, on every side, surrounded by all that was most handsome, most chivalrous, in Europe. She had not actually turned from the lover of her girlhood—no! even de Landas was forced to admit that—but she had learned to appraise him in the same crucible as other men; and, with teeth set, and shame and anger gnawing in his heart, de Landas had to tell himself that she had apparently found him wanting. Time was when nothing on earth would have turned her admiration away from him, when, whatever the appearances might be, she would look up to him as the fount of all bravery and of all honour. But last night she had only been gentle and pitying, and a few hours later had led Monseigneur into investigating the whole affair.
De Landas' fist against the window ledge was clenched until the knuckles of his slender hand gleamed like ivory. Had the masked stranger himself aught to do with Jacqueline's disloyalty? Suddenly the Spaniard felt that at any cost he must know the truth about that, at any cost he must wring an avowal from Jacqueline's lips, whether in her innermost soul she had ever by one single thought been unfaithful to him.
As fast as his gathering weakness would allow, he hurried through the interminable corridors of the Palace, until he found himself down in the hall below, at the foot of the main staircase, not twenty paces away from the room where he had endured such bitter humiliation last night. Instinct drew him to that room, the window of which gave direct access on to a terraced walk and thence on to the park.
He pushed open the door behind which a few brief hours ago he and his friends had laid in wait so shamelessly for their unsuspecting enemy. Almost furtively he stepped over the threshold and peeped in. He scarce recognized the place, thought he had mistaken the door; and yet there were all the landmarks: the desk with its kidney-shaped top, which had proved such a useful rampart for the enemy; the chairs which the masked stranger had brandished like swivels above his head when the cowardly order was given to the varlets to help in the attack; the heavy curtain which had been the last, the most formidable weapon of defence.
All these things had been put back in their respective places; a fresh piece of matting covered the floor; the curtain had been hung once more in front of the window—not a stain, not a mark, not a break testified to the terrible orgy of bloodshed which had desecrated this noble apartment last night.
De Landas looked all about him in astonishment. He stepped further into the room, and even as he did so, a strong current of air caused the heavy door behind him to fall to with a bang. As de Landas looked across the room in order to see what had been the cause of this sudden gust he saw that the window opposite was open to the ground, and that Jacqueline had apparently just entered that way from the terraced walk beyond.
She did not see him just at first, but stood for awhile intent, as he had been, in noting the appearance of the room. The window framed her in like a perfect picture, with her dark gown and her golden hair and soft white skin. The hood of her cloak had fallen back over her shoulders and she held her heavy skirt gathered up in her hand.
'Jacqueline!' exclaimed the young man impulsively.
She looked up and saw him, and, quite serenely, stepped into the room, went forward to greet him with hand outstretched, her face expressing gentle solicitude.
'Why, José!' she said lightly, 'I had no thought of seeing you to-day.'
'Which,' he retorted glumly, 'doth not seem to have greatly troubled you.'
'I knew that you were sick. Surely the leech hath prescribed absolute rest.'
'I did not think of sickness or of rest,' he rejoined, with an undercurrent of grim reproach in his tone. 'I only thought of seeing you.'
'I would have come to you,' she said calmly, 'as soon as the leech advised.'
'And I could not wait,' he riposted with a sigh. 'That is all the difference there is, Jacqueline, between your love and mine.'
Then, as she made no reply, but led him gently, like a sick child, to a chair, he added sombrely:
'I came to bid you farewell, Jacqueline.'
'Farewell? I don't understand.'
'I am going away.'
'Whither?'
He shrugged his shoulders.
'Chien sabe?' he said. 'What does it matter?'
'You are enigmatical, dear cousin,' she retorted. 'Will you not explain?'
'The explanation is over simple, alas! Monseigneur the governor hath expelled me from this city.'
'Expelled you from this city?' she reiterated slowly.
'Yes! for daring to lay hands on His High and Mightiness, Monseigneur le Prince de Froidmont.'
'José, you are jesting!'
'I was never so serious in all my life.'
'And you are going?'
'To-night.'
'But whither?' she insisted.
'As I said before: Chien sabe?'
He spoke now in a harsh, husky voice. Obviously his nerves were on edge and he had some difficulty in controlling himself. He was sitting by the desk and his arm lay across the top of it, with fist clenched, while his dark eyes searched the face of the young girl through and through while he spoke. She was standing a few paces away from him, looking down on him with a vague, puzzled expression in her face.
'José,' she said after awhile, 'you are unnerved, angered, for the moment. You think, no doubt, that I am to blame for Monseigneur's knowledge of last night's affair. I swear to you that I am not, that on the other hand I did all that was humanly possible to keep the shameful affair a secret from every one.'
'Shameful, Jacqueline?' he protested.
'Yes, shameful!' she replied firmly. 'Monseigneur, it seems, received an inkling of the truth early this morning—how, I know not. But he sent for the watchmen and had them examined; then he told me what had occurred.'
'And you believed him?'
'I neither believed nor disbelieved. I was hideously, painfully puzzled. Now you tell me that my guardian hath expelled you from this city. He would not have done that, José, if he had not proof positive of your guilt.'
'Well!' he rejoined with sudden, brusque arrogance. 'I'll not deny it!'
'José!'
'I did waylay a malapert, an impudent rogue, with the view to administering a sound correction to his egregious vanity. I do not deny it. I am proud of it! And you, Jacqueline, should commend me for having done you service.'
'I cannot commend you for last night's work, José,' she said earnestly. 'It was cowardly and unchivalrous.'
'Pardieu!' he riposted roughly. 'I am going to be punished for it severely enough, methinks. Expelled from this town! Thrown to the tender mercies of the Duke of Parma and his armies, who will vent on me their resentment for my loyalty to the Flemish cause!'
'Nay, José! I swear to you that Monseigneur will relent.'
'Not he!'
'He only meant to frighten you, to cow you perhaps into submission. He was already angered with you after the banquet, for attacking Messire le Prince de Froidmont. He thought your action of the night not only a dishonourable one, but a direct defiance of his orders.'
'Not he!' quoth de Landas again. Then he added with a sudden burst of bitter resentment. 'He wants to get me out of the way—to separate me from you!'
'You must not be surprised, José,' she retorted quietly, 'that after what happened last night, my guardian's opposition has not undergone a change in your favour. But have I not sworn that he will relent? I will go to him now—I shall know what to say ... he so seldom refuses me anything I ask for.'
'I forbid you to go, Jacqueline!' he interposed quickly, for already she had turned to go.
'Forbid me? Why? I will not compromise your dignity; have no fear of that.'
'I forbid you to go!' he reiterated sullenly.
'You are foolish, José! I assure you that I understand Monseigneur's moods better than any one else in the world. I know that he is always just as ready to pardon as to punish. 'Tis not much pleading that I shall have to do.'
'You'll not plead for me, Jacqueline.'
'José!'
'You'll not plead. 'Tis not necessary.'
'What do you mean?'
'That I am already pardoned.'
'Already pardoned?'
'Yes. I am not expelled from the city.'
'But you told me——'
'It was all a ruse!'
'A ruse?'
'Yes!' he cried with a sudden outburst of rage, long enough held in check. 'Yes! A ruse to find out if you loved me still!'
Then, as instinctively, at sight of his face, which had become distorted with fury, she stepped back in order to avoid closer contact with him, he jumped up from his chair, and while she continued to retreat, he followed her step by step, and she watched him, fascinated and appalled by the look of deathly hatred which gleamed in his eyes.
'A year ago, Jacqueline,' he went on, speaking now through set teeth, so that his voice came to her like the hissing of an angry snake; 'a year—nay, a month, a week ago—if I had told you that I was going away from you, you would have thrown yourself in my arms in the agony of your grief; you would have wept torrents of tears and wrung your hands and yielded your sweet face, your full, red lips unasked to my caresses. But now——'
He paused. She could retreat no further, for her back was against the wall. Instinctively she put out her arms in order to keep him off. But he suddenly seized her with a fury so fierce that she could have screamed with the pain, which seemed literally to break her back in two. He held her close to him, his warm breath scorched her face, his lips sought her throat, her cheeks, her eyes, with a violence of passion so intense that for the moment she felt weak and helpless in his arms. Only for a moment, however. The next, she had recovered that dignified calm which was so characteristic of her quaint personality. She made no resistance, because of a truth she had not the power to shake herself free from his embrace; but her figure suddenly became absolutely rigid, and once or twice he met a look in her eyes which was so laden with contempt, that his exasperation gave itself vent in a long, impassioned tirade, wherein he poured forth the full venom of the pent-up rage, hatred, jealousy which was seething in his heart.
'You! Miserable Flemish cinder-wench!' he cried. 'So you thought that you could toy with the passion of a Spanish gentleman? You thought that you could use him and play with him for just as long as it suited your fancy, and that you could cast him aside like a torn shoe as soon as some one richer, greater, more important, appeared upon the scene. Well! let me tell you this, my fine Madame! That I'll not give you up! I'll not! No! Though I do not love you, any more than I do any slut who tosses me a passing kiss. But I'll not give you up—to that accursed stranger, or to any man; do you hear? You are mine, and I'll keep you—you and your fortune. I have reckoned on it and I want it—and I'll have it, if I have to drag you in the gutter first, or burn this confounded city about your ears!'
His voice had gradually grown more and more husky, until the last words came out of his parched throat like the screech of some wild animal gloating over its prey. But in his present state of health, the effort and the excitement proved too great for his endurance. He turned suddenly dizzy and sick, staggered and would have fallen headlong at her feet, if she herself had not supported him.
She had remained perfectly still while he poured forth that hideous torrent of insults and vituperation, which, in her sight, were akin to the writhings of some venomous reptile. She could not move or stop her ears from hearing, because he held her fast. Tall, stately and impassive, she had stood her ground like some unapproachable goddess whom the ravings of a raging cur could not in any way pollute.
Now that he became momentarily helpless, she gave him the support of her arm and led him quietly back to the chair. When he was once more seated and in a fair way of recovering from this semi-swoon, she—still quite calmly—turned to go.
'You are unnerved, José,' she said coldly, 'and had best remain here now till I fetch your servants. I could wish for your sake as well as for mine own that this had been an everlasting farewell.'
After which she walked quite slowly across the room, opened the door with a firm hand and went out. A moment or two later, de Landas could hear her giving instructions to his servants in a perfectly clear and firm voice. He leaned back in his chair and gave a harsh laugh of triumph.
'And now, Monseigneur le Prince de Froidmont,' he murmured under his breath, 'we shall see which of us will be the conqueror in the life and death struggle which is to come.'