IV
When, ten minutes or so later, Nicolle came back, shame-faced, remorseful and not a little frightened, she was surprised and delighted to find her young mistress sitting quite composedly in a high-backed chair in the centre of the room, the window closed, and the lady herself quite eager to go to bed.
'Thou hast been gone a long time, Colle,' said the young girl carelessly. 'Where hast thou been?'
Old Colle sighed with relief. The Lord be praised! Madame had evidently seen and heard nothing of that vulgar scuffle which had ended in such disaster for poor Pierre, and in such a triumph for the impudent rascal who had since disappeared just as quickly as he came.
'I just went round to see that those wenches were all abed and that their lights were safely out,' replied the old woman with brazen hypocrisy.
'And didst speak to Pierre on the way?' queried Jacqueline, who had assumed the quaintest possible air of simple ingenuousness.
'Aye!' replied the old woman dryly. 'I spoke to Pierre.'
'What did he say?'
'Nothing of importance. We talked of to-morrow's banquet.'
'To-morrow's banquet?'
'Do not feign surprise, my pigeon,' rejoined old Colle, who was decidedly out of humour. 'I even asked thee to-night, before taking off thy gown, if thou wouldst wear that one or another on the morrow.'
'I remember,' replied Jacqueline with a yawn, 'I said that I did not care what I wore, as I hated banquets, and company and bowings and——'
'But Monseigneur said that the banquet to-morrow would be for a special occasion.'
'When did he say that?'
'A moment or two ago—to Pierre.'
'And what will the special occasion be to-morrow?'
Nicolle looked mysterious.
'Maybe,' she said, 'that it is not altogether unconnected with Monseigneur de Landas.'
'Why with him?' asked Jacqueline eagerly.
'Oh! I am only putting two and two together, my cabbage,' replied old Colle with a sly wink. 'There is talk of distinguished guests in Cambray, of betrothals, and ... and ...
'Betrothals?'
'Why, yes. Thou art nearly twenty, my pigeon, and Monseigneur, thy guardian, will have to make up his mind that thou wilt marry sooner or later. I always thought that he did favour Monseigneur de Landas, until——'
'Until what?' queried Jacqueline impatiently.
'There are so many rumours in the air,' replied Colle sententiously. 'Some talk of the Duc d'Anjou, who is own brother to the King of France.'
Jacqueline made a little moue of disdain.
'Oh! Monsieur!' she said carelessly.
'A very great and noble prince, my pigeon.'
'I am tired of great and noble princes.'
'But Monseigneur, the Duc d'Anjou...'
'Is one of the many, I suppose, who want my fortune, my family connexions, the Sovereignty of the Netherlands. Bah!' she added with an impatient sigh. 'They sicken me!'
'A great lady, my cabbage,' said Nicolle solemnly, 'cannot follow the dictates of her heart like a common wench.'
'Why!' exclaimed Jacqueline. 'Methought thou wast all for M. de Landas!'
'So I am, my pigeon, so I am!' rejoined the old woman. 'He is a very distinguished gentleman, who loves thee ardently. But if there's one who is own brother to the King of France....' And old Colle gave an unctuous sigh when she spoke the exalted name.
'Bah!' retorted Jacqueline with a careless shrug of the shoulders. 'There are others too! And no one can force me into a marriage whilst my heart is pledged to M. de Landas.'
'No, no! Thank God for that!' assented Colle piously. 'As for the others ... well! their name is legion ... some of them will be at the banquet to-morrow.... There is the Marquis de Hancourt, a fine-looking youth, and that horrid German prince whom I cannot abide! The English lord hath gone away, so they say, broken-hearted at thy refusal; but there's the Spanish duke, whose name I cannot remember, and Don José, own son to the Emperor.... As for that stranger——' she added with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
'The stranger?' queried Jacqueline lazily. 'What stranger?
'Well, I don't know much about him. But Pierre, feeling crestfallen, did admit that Monseigneur chided him severely for having shown a want of respect to a gentleman who ought to have known better than to pretend to be a street musician.'
But Jacqueline appeared all of a sudden to have lost interest in the conversation. 'Ah!' she said with well-assumed indifference, 'then the street musician of awhile ago was a gentleman in disguise?'
'Aye! so Pierre said—the fool!' quoth old Colle unblushingly. 'Monseigneur was very angry with him when he heard of the altercation with the singer, threatened to speak of the matter to M. de Landas and have Pierre flogged or dismissed for his interference. Then he hinted that the stranger, far from being a street musician, was a foreign seigneur of high degree, even if of scanty fortune.'
'Oh!' commented Jacqueline carelessly.
'And he e'en ordered Pierre to go and apologize most humbly to the stranger, who it seems is lodging in a very poor hostelry known as "Les Trois Rois," just close to the Porte Notre Dame.'
Jacqueline ostentatiously smothered a yawn.
'I think I'll go to bed now, Colle,' she said.
But Colle's tongue, once loosened, could not so easily be checked.
'Town gossip,' she went on with great volubility, 'has been busy with that stranger for the past two days. 'Tis said that he is styled Monseigneur le Prince de Froidmont; though what a prince should be doing in a shabby hostel in that squalid quarter of the city I, for one, do not know—nor why he should be going about masked and cloaked through the city in the guise of a vagabond.'
'Perhaps the vagabond is no prince after all,' suggested Jacqueline.
'That's what I say,' asserted Colle triumphantly. 'And that's what Pierre thought until Monseigneur told him that if he did not go at once and offer his humble apologies he surely would get a flogging, seeing that the Prince de Froidmont would actually be a guest at the banquet to-morrow, and would of a certainty complain to M. de Landas.'
'A guest at the banquet!' exclaimed Jacqueline involuntarily.'
'Aye!' assented Colle. 'Didst ever hear the like! But he must be a distinguished seigneur for all that, or Monseigneur would not bid him come.'
'No, I suppose not,' said Jacqueline with perfect indifference. 'The Prince de Froidmont?' she added with a little yawn. 'Is that his name?'
'So the town gossips say,' replied Colle, who was busy just then in wrapping the bed-gown round her young mistress's shoulders.
'And he comes to the banquet to-morrow?'
'So Monseigneur said to Pierre.'
Jacqueline said nothing more for the moment, appeared to have lost all interest in the masked musician and in Pierre's misdeeds. She stretched out her arms lazily while vigorous old Colle picked her up as if she were a baby and carried her—as she was wont to do every night—to her bed.
She laid her down upon the soft feather mattress and spread the fine coverlets over her. The alcove wherein stood the monumental bedstead was in semi-darkness, for the light from the wax candles in the sconces about the room failed to penetrate into the recess. But that semi-darkness was restful, and for awhile Jacqueline lay back against the pillows, with eyes closed, in a state of that complete well-being which is one of the monopolies of youth. Nicolle, thinking that Madame would be dropping off to sleep, made a movement to go; but Jacqueline's small white hand had hold of the old woman's bony fingers, and old Colle, abjectly happy at feeling the pressure, remained quite still, waiting and watching, gazing with doglike devotion on the lovely face—lovely in repose as it was when the light of gaiety and roguishness danced in the blue eyes.
After a few minutes of this silent beatitude, Jacqueline opened her eyes and said in a dreamy voice, half-asleep:
'Tell me, Colle, which is my prettiest gown?'
And Nicolle—herself more than half-way to the land of Nod—roused herself in order to reply: 'The white one with the pearls, my pigeon.'
She was sufficiently awake to feel quite happy at the thought that Madame was suddenly taking an interest in her clothes, and continued eagerly: 'It hath an underdress of that lovely new green colour which hath become the mode of late, and all embroidered with silver. Nothing more beautiful hath ever been fashioned by tailors' art, and in it Madame looks just like an exquisite white lily, with the delicate green stem below.'
'Well then, Colle,' rejoined Jacqueline dreamily, 'to-morrow evening I will wear my white satin gown with the pearls and the underdress of green and silver, and Mathurine must study a new way of doing my hair with the pointed coif which they say is so modish now in France. I will wear my stockings of crimson silk and my velvet shoes, and round my neck I'll wear the ropes of pearls which my dear mother did bequeath to me; in my ears I'll have the emerald earrings, and I'll wear the emerald ring upon my finger. I wish I had not that ugly mole upon my left cheek-bone, for then I could have had one of those tiny patches of black taffeta which are said to be so becoming to the complexion....'
She paused, and added with quaint wistfulness: 'Think you, Colle, that I shall look handsome?'
'As lovely as a picture, my dear one,' said Nicolle with enthusiasm. 'As exquisite as a lily; fit only to be the bride of a King.'
Jacqueline gave a quick sigh of satisfaction, after which she allowed Colle to give her a kiss and to bid her a final 'good night.'
And even as she fell gradually into the delicious and dreamless sleep of youth, her lips murmured softly: 'I wonder!'