Part 28 (1/2)
”The prince--pardon, monsieur--they call him Lulu in Paris.”
”Hurry,” said Jack; ”I want that horse at once.”
Ten minutes later he was galloping furiously down the forest road towards the Chateau de Nesville. The darkness was impenetrable, so he let the horse find his own path, and gave himself up to a profound dejection that at times amounted to blind fear. Before his eyes he saw the pallid face of the Marquis de Nesville, he saw the man stretched on the floor, horribly still; that was the worst, the stillness of the body.
The sky was gray through the trees when he turned into the park and skirted the wall to the wicket. The wicket was locked. He rang repeatedly, he shook the grille and pounded on the iron escutcheon with the b.u.t.t of his riding-crop; and at length a yawning servant appeared from the gate-lodge and sleepily dragged open the wicket.
”The marquis was ill, have you heard anything?” asked Jack.
”The marquis is there on the porch,” said the servant, with a gesture towards the house.
Jack's heart leaped up. ”Thank G.o.d!” he muttered, and dismounted, throwing his bridle to the porter, who now appeared in the doorway.
He could see the marquis walking to and fro, hands clasped behind his strong, athletic back; his head was turned in Jack's direction. ”The marquis is crazy,” thought Jack, hesitating. He was convinced now that long brooding over ancient wrongs had unsettled the man's mind. There had always been something in his dazzling blue eyes that troubled Jack, and now he knew it was the pale light of suppressed frenzy. Still, he would have to face him sooner or later, and he did not recoil now that the hour and the place and the man had come.
”I'll settle it once for all,” he thought, and walked straight up the path to the house. The marquis came down the steps to meet him.
”I expected you,” he said, without a trace of anger. ”I have much to say to you. Will you come in or shall we sit in the arbour there? You will enter? Then come to the turret, Monsieur Marche.”
Jack would have refused, but he had not the courage. He was not at all pleased at the idea of mounting to a turret with a man whom he had laid violent hands on the night before, a man whom he had seen succ.u.mb to an access of insane fury in the presence of the Emperor of France. But he went, cursing the cowardice that prevented him from being cautious; and in a few moments he entered the chamber where retorts and bottles and steel machinery littered every corner, and the pale dawn broke through the window in ghastly streams of light, changing the candle-flames to sickly greenish blotches.
They sat opposite each other, neither speaking. Jack glanced at a heavy steel rod on the floor beside him. It was just as well to know it was there, in case of need.
”Monsieur,” said the marquis, abruptly, ”I owe you a great deal more than my life, which is nothing; I owe you my family honour.”
This was a new way of looking at the situation; Jack fidgeted in his chair and eyed the marquis.
”Thanks to you,” he continued, quietly, ”I am not an a.s.sa.s.sin, I am not a butcher of dogs. The De Nesvilles were never public executioners--they left that to the Bonapartes and Monsieur de Paris.”
He rose hastily from his chair and held out a hand. Jack took it warily and returned the nervous pressure. Then they both resumed their seats.
”Let us clear matters up,” said the marquis in a wonderfully gentle voice, that would have been fascinating to more phlegmatic men than Jack--”let us clear up everything and understand each other. You, monsieur, dislike me; pardon--you dislike me for reasons of your own. I, on the contrary, like you; I like you better this moment than I ever did. Had you not come as I expected, had you not entered, had you refused to mount to the turret, I still should have liked you. Now I also respect you.”
Jack twisted and turned in his chair, not knowing what to think or say.
”Why do you dislike me?” asked the marquis, quietly.
”Because you are not kind to your daughter,” said Jack, bluntly.
To his horror the man's eyes filled with tears, big, glittering tears that rolled down his immovable face. Then a flush stained his forehead; the fever in his cheeks dried the tears.
”Jack,” he said, calling the young fellow by his name with a peculiarly tender gesture, ”I loved my son. My soul died within me when Rene died, there on the muddy pavement of the Paris boulevards. I sometimes think I am perhaps a little out of my mind; I brood on it too much. That is why I flung myself into this”--with a sweep of his arm towards the flasks and machinery piled around. ”Lorraine is a girl, sweet, lovable, loyal. But she is not my daughter.”
”Lorraine!” stammered Jack.
”Lorraine.”
The young fellow sat up in his chair and studied the face of the pale man before him.
”Not--your child?”
”No.”