AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I, Adrian Trent, now known as Lord Trent, and a captain of Les Mousquetaires Gris, sat in my little salon in the Lion d'Or, in the Rue Louis le Grand in Paris, on Midsummer Day, in the year of our Lord 1726. And in my hand I held a little perfumed billet, which I had turned over in my fingers a dozen times, and had, perhaps, read twice as often. For it recalled to me a strange meeting, and some strange scenes in which I had been concerned when I was but a porte-drapeau. Also it recalled to me some other things far sweeter, which, to a young man, must needs be pleasant recollections—to wit, things such as a lovely face flushed now and again with the colour that adorns the blushing rose of Provence; dark eyes, sometimes as soft as velvet, and sometimes sparkling like ice beneath the winter sun; black hair that once—in an awful moment of fear and extremity—I had seen adown the owner's back, almost to her feet; a supple girlish form, and other charms. A girl whom, although I had not seen her for five years, I had never forgotten, but whom I always strove to forget, because she was wealthy and I was poor; because, although I was a man of good rank in my own country, she was almost of the very highest in hers; because she was, in truth, as far above me as the sun is above the earth. Yet once, for a little while, that girl and I had been the best of friends; once, too, it seemed as if that friendship had been very near to a softer and more tender emotion, and as if Adrian Trent and Ana, Princesa de Carbajal, were falling in love with each other—if they had not already done so.
Whereupon, thinking over all these things, I again turned the letter in my hands, and again I read it.
"So you are back in Paris, I hear," it ran; "and would you not like to see a girl called Damaris whom once you knew? I think you would—perhaps in memory of having saved that girl's life on one occasion;[1] of also having once called her by the prettiest epithet a man can bestow on any woman, and of having been much teased and pestered by that girl. If so, then come to the Marais, to the Rue des Vraies Femmes, and to the house which bears the name of my family, and if you come at the proper time I will give you some chocolate and a bonbon. I wonder if you are much changed, and if you will find me so!
Damaris."
The prettiest epithet a man can bestow on any woman! So she remembered it! remembered that I had called her "sweetheart" in all the impudence of boyhood and the possession of my guidon in the mousquetaires, and when I did not know that she was a princess of one of the most ancient and powerful families in Catalonia, and in possession of enormous estates and great wealth.
But did she remember another thing also—namely, that after being highly indignant with me for my presumption, she had laughed and whispered that pretty word to me in return? Did she remember that? If not, I did. And now I would see for it.
An hour later I was outside the great door of the Hôtel de Carbajal, and a lackey answering my summons, I learned that the Princess was within. Whereon I bade him say that Lord Trent waited below to pay his devoirs to her, if it might be that she would receive him.
"Her Highness expects milor," the man said. "Will milor give himself the trouble to follow me?"
Whereon "milor," attired in his best black satin suit—for, alas! he had but recently returned from England, and the funeral of his father—and silver lace, did follow the man through the great gloomy house, and along corridor after corridor, he thinking all the time of what the fellow had said—that "her Highness expected him." "So," "milor" said to himself, "she knew I would come."
Then the door opened, and the footman announced "Milor Trent," and for some reason the midsummer sun seemed to dazzle my eyes, and I saw a figure spring—that is the word, "spring"—from a deep fauteuil, and I felt two slim hands in mine, and I heard a well-remembered voice say, "So you have come, my lord."
"Yes, I have come, your Highness. You knew very well that I should come. Yet, yet," for, somehow, I at once began to grow bold, "there was no word of 'Highness' nor of 'lord' in the old days. Then you were 'a girl called Damaris,' and——"
"And," she interrupted, with a soft laugh, "you were an impudent young soldier called Blue Eyes. But now we are old, staid people. I am twenty-four."
"And I am twenty-five," I interrupted in my turn.
"Wherefore we have grown sober and steady. Still, notwithstanding that, you may tell me if you choose whether you think I have aged very much."
Aged very much! Yes, she had aged, if being more beautiful than ever meant having aged. For now the sun dazzled me no longer, and I could see all her loveliness, I could observe that the tall, slim form had grown a little, just a little, more womanly; that the soft dark eyes had just a little more of calmness in their gaze; that the scarlet lips were as full, and the small white teeth, which I had always admired so much, as brilliant.
"But all the same," she said, while I surveyed her, "you need not hold my hand so long. One does not look at another with their fingers."
Then, when I had released that hand, which, I protest, I did not know I was holding, she bade me sit down by her side, she herself taking a seat upon a great Segovian ottoman close by, and drawing up to her a little ebony table upon which was a little gilt coach, with the doors and windows of glass, and with four little silver horses to it, and a coachman and footman in gold. And she opened one of the doors of this little coach and popped her long slim fingers in and drew out a bonbon, and, I thought, was going to pop it in my mouth too. But, if that had been her intention, she considered better of it, perhaps because she was now "sober and steady," and so, instead, laid it gravely down on the ebony table, and pointed to it, and said, "Eat it;" which I did.
"Now," she said, "we will drink something, à la bonne chance. I drink chocolate; but since you are a great big mousquetaire you may have some wine if you choose. Let me see; there is Florence wine, and Lunel and Muscadine, and——"
"I shall drink the chocolate or nothing," I said firmly, since I was not going to sit toping like a rude mousquetaire before my Princess while she drank the other. Whereon she told me to ring the bell and order the chocolate, and in ten minutes we were discussing that beverage, and the footman had left us alone.
"Oh!" she exclaimed volatilely, "do you remember, Blue Eyes—I mean, my lord—when I sat on the table in the inn at Toulouse and drank wine out of your cup, surrounded by you and your huge troopers, and when I was supposed to be a wandering vagrant girl called Damaris?"
"You will always be Damaris to me. I shan't call you 'Princess' nor 'Highness,' and I wish you would not call me by that silly title of 'lord.' And I've only been one a month, and have not grown used to it."
"But what am I to call you? I mustn't call you Blue Eyes any more, because we are now grave and staid; and Adrian is too familiar. I should poniard you if you were to call me Ana."
"There was another name exchanged between us once," I said—"one alluded to in your letter received by me to-day."
"Ah!" she said, with a little shriek, "don't recall that. How dare you! I only wrote it to bring myself back to your memory."
"Oh!" I said, "did you? Well, now, what did your high—I mean you, Damaris—send for me for at all, if it was only to be so haughty and distant? There are no more burning houses to save you from; and as for—for—old Alberoni——"
"Monseigneur the Cardinal Alberoni, if you please."
"As for Monseigneur the Cardinal Alberoni—well! what has become of him? He has finished his sch—politics—I suppose?"
"He lives the life of a saint at Piacenza. But—but I did not send for you to talk about his Eminence."
"What then, Da—I mean—well!—you understand?"
"You remember," she said, "that you did save my life once? Of course you do; you have but just referred to it."
"Is it in danger now? And am I to save it again?"
"My happiness is. I want you to save me from a man—a man who, though perhaps it may surprise you, wants to marry me."
"Ah! bah!" I said, forgetting my manners and jumping out of my chair, and beginning to walk about the room. "Bah! A man wants to marry you, indeed!" and I felt quite angry at the very idea of such a thing.
"It is strange that he should desire to do so, is it not?" she said, with a queer little, but very pretty, grimace. "All the same, it's the truth. It is indeed, Blue—I mean, my lord."
"Who is the fellow?"
"Oh!" she said, with another of her little shrieks. "The fellow! Why—er—Lord Trent—he is one of the scions of our royal house—of Austria and Spain."
"Shall I run him through? I will if he wants to marry you—and—and—you bid me do so."
"You might have to run more than one through, at that rate, Blue Eyes," and this time she forgot to correct herself, which, if I remember rightly, seemed to please me; "I think you might, indeed. But, no! I imagine you can do better than that."
"How? I'll do it."
"Will you, my lord?" ("Vengeance confound that title!" thought I.) "I wonder if you will?"
"What shall I do? Tell me and it shall be done, Damaris," forgetting myself also in my agitation.
"I suppose," she said, speaking slowly, and with a wondrous look in those witching eyes, "you would not condescend to play at being my lover, would you?—only for a little while—say for a week or so."
"Wouldn't I! Try me! But—but—am I to have all the privileges of a lover during that week or so? Eh, Damaris?"
"Don't call me Damaris; it is not respectful. Yes, you may have all the privileges of a lover—in public."
"Oh! in public. But—in private! Then——"
"Then I am the Princesa de Carbajal and you are Lord Trent."
"What are a lover's privileges in public—I mean with princesses and scions of ancient houses? He has to be a kind of slave, a worshipper, does he not?"
"He does as a rule; but then, you see, Blu—my lord," and while she spoke she held a bonbon out tantalisingly before my eyes, "you have got to play a different part from the ordinary one of a lover to a princess. You will play it, won't you—Adrian?"
"I'll play anything," I said, much agitated by the last word she uttered.
"Bueno! Well, now, see. You must be a humble lover—one beneath me, with whom I have fallen in love in a manner discreditable to my rank. And, thereby, you will make my suitor jealous—oh! so jealous—because we will play such tricks upon him that he will renounce me. Oh! I have invented such schemes to make him do so. Neither Quevedo nor Vega ever thought of such tricks."
"It will be a dangerous game," I said meditatively.
"Dangerous! Dangerous!" she exclaimed. "Why, Blue Eyes, you are not afraid of a Spanish don although he is of the royal house, are you? Fie! and you a soldier."
"That isn't the danger I meant," I replied quietly, so quietly that she guessed my meaning in a moment, as I saw by the rich crimson which mantled her cheek instantly, and the increased brilliancy of her lovely, starlike eyes.
"Dangerous to whom, pray?" she demanded.
"To me!" I answered boldly; "because I shall lo——"
"Hsh! hsh! hsh!" she said, putting her hand up quickly. "None of that! none of that! Yet, nevertheless, there will be danger—to——"
"Whom?" I asked now.
"To you, of course. Oh! not to me, Blue Eyes. Oh no! no!" she continued somewhat nervously, I thought. "Not to me. Oh no. Think not that, my lord."
"I can think what I like," I said. "Even a slave's thoughts are his own. But where's the danger, if you mean ordinary danger?"
"He is great," she almost whispered now, "and powerful, even in Paris. He is, too, enormously rich, richer than I am, and can hire people to do whatsoever he wishes. He might hire vagabonds to assault you—to—to—oh! Adrian!—throw you into the Seine with your throat cut, or stab you under the shoulder in a dark alley, and—and—all because you do this out of friendship for me, and with no hope of reward."
"Stab you under the shoulder in a dark alley."
"I shall get my reward," I said quietly.
For a moment she regarded me calmly; then she said, "You are very confident, very masterful."
"Yes," I replied, "very confident, and—well! very masterful."
CHAPTER II