Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)
The chill of presentiment touched Gabrielle like an icy wind as she pa.s.sed in to the dreary hall, black now in shadowy twilight. The crumbling implements of torture on the walls took fantastic and forbidding shapes. The panoplies of helmets of the Moyen Age seemed to mope, and mow, and wink their eyeless sockets. Somehow, Lorge seemed more grimly forbidding than before, after the long absence; there was a pervading odour of dank decay which was as a breath from out the charnel-house. The chatelaine shuddered, and drawing her cloak closer took her foster-sister by the hand.
”What is it? Toinon, tell me,” she whispered. ”Has something dreadful happened?”
Toinon glanced round quickly with the same strange expression of doubt mingled with concern, and held her peace.
What could it be? Toinon appeared to consider that her mistress had done something wrong--or was it some act, whose unwisdom she would surely rue, which filled the eyes of the foster-sister with disapproval. In the look there was pained surprise as well as pity.
The tightened lips were closed, imprisoning reproach.
Foreboding, she knew not what, the marquise mounted the grand staircase and opened the door of the long saloon, expecting to find the children there.
”Not here? Where are they?” began Gabrielle. Then her voice died away, the words frozen on her lips. The brothers had remained below, ostensibly to superintend the removal of the baggage from the coach.
In the dim saloon with its view through the gaunt row of windows of the crocus-coloured Loire, stood Gabrielle aghast, and Toinon, with brows knit anxiously--and against the light at the further end a tall, upright figure like a sable shadow, that was only too familiar.
”She!” murmured the startled chatelaine, clasping her hands upon her breast. ”Mademoiselle Aglae Brunelle!”
”It was a trick, then,” Toinon muttered, with a deepening frown. ”She knew not of her coming!”
The commanding figure swept swiftly past the tapestries of Odette and the mad old king, and with a glad cry Aglae seized Gabrielle's cold hands and covered them with kisses.
”The good marquise!” she cooed. ”The dear excellent marquise! I am so glad, so glad, to have been summoned! There was a little unpleasantness, was there not? A deplorable misunderstanding, and our dearest lady like the angel that she is, has forgiven and forgotten, and we are better friends than ever.”
”I never summoned you,” began the marquise, faintly, but her voice was quickly drowned in the torrent of the other's volubility.
”I know--I know,” she purred, with kittenish gestures of overweening joy. ”It was but a tiny ripple on our ideal life! Madame was sorry to have so misread her Aglae's devotion, and bade the dear abbe to invite her hither on a visit. Did I delay an instant? Surely not, for I burned to show the good marquise how cruelly she'd wronged me. Oh!
What ineffable delight! Is it not well to be divided by a tiff to taste the glad moment of reunion?”
Gabrielle remaining silent, too giddy and too sick to collect her thoughts, the other went on glibly--
”I arrived yesterday, a whole day before you, and have been so good--have I not, Mademoiselle Toinon? You like not poor Aglae, and frown at her, but must speak honest truth. Knowing to my dismay and grief when I went hence that madame could deign to be jealous of one so insignificant, I refrained from embracing my pets until madame should grant permission. And since I adore them as if they were my own, madame can guess what that has cost me. Yes! I can hardly believe it possible myself, but I've not yet seen either Victor or Camille, the sweet ones!”
With a sigh of admiration and a large gesture of the dusky arms, suggestive of amazement at such self-control, Aglae ceased, shaking her head archly, and holding the unwilling chatelaine by both hands, gazed long and fondly at her.
It was evident that the woman was playing a part, and was over-acting it. Was this done purposely, that the marquise, who was not clever, might have no doubt about the acting? It seemed so to watchful Toinon.
The creature had succeeded somehow in inflicting her baleful presence for a second time upon the _menage_, and wished it to be understood that the returned Mademoiselle Brunelle was another person, no relation to the one who had been ejected. Why had she come? What did she propose to do? She surely did not expect the hapless marquise to clasp in her arms one who had so injured her--respond in earnest to her blandishments?
The brothers had come up the stairs to reconnoitre, and stood somewhat shyly in the doorway. Was there to be an explosion---a harrowing scene in which pa.s.sion was to be torn to tatters; or was the artful play of the abbe to win the trick? He took in the situation with an exulting heart-thump. He had judged rightly. Of course he had! The marquise, pale as marble, was struck dumb--discomfited. She neither stormed nor wept. With a movement almost as kittenish as Aglae's, he joined the group.
”Reconciled? I knew it,” he cried, rubbing his white hands with relief. ”Clovis, come and witness this delightful spectacle. The past is past and buried. We shall now begin afresh, and, profiting by experience, will be so happy, that madame will forgive our little _ruse_. The fact is, my sweet Gabrielle, that Clovis intends to devote himself to a yet deeper course of study, which requires a secretary and a partner--one who has an inkling of the secrets which are to be unearthed for the world's benefit. I took on myself, therefore, to risk the vials of a transient annoyance for the ultimate good of all.
Mademoiselle will now be so occupied with her new duties that, to her regret, she must renounce all intercourse with the little ones. This, I believe, will meet your wishes? You are not angry? That is well. We are both pardoned, are we not?”
The marquise cast one slow glance of dumb remonstrance at Clovis, who was s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other, guiltily, and shaking herself free from the exuberant Aglae, left the room with Toinon.
Her strange reception by the latter was fully explained. Her foster-sister had believed that she was sufficiently unstable of purpose herself to have summoned the evil spirit that had been exorcised; it had not entered the girl's head that the men could have dared secretly to play such a trick upon her patience. What was their motive for the proceeding? Did the woman wield an occult power over the marquis such as forced him to obey her will even from a distance?
Did she hold him in such abject thraldom that he really could not get on without her? The abbe had been the acting party in the arrangement.
Had he re-introduced the bugbear merely to distress his sister-in-law, and display his malignant spleen? Such speculations as these pa.s.sed vaguely through Gabrielle's dizzy brain as she stared aimlessly from her bedroom window into the courtyard, mechanically counting the big familiar stones which composed the opposite wall, surveying the iron-bound postern door with its complicated locks and bolts.
Toinon watched her mistress with growing ire as she bustled hither and thither arranging the details of the toilet.