The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

poplar trees.

Luc looked back and saw that the windows of the house were all

shuttered, and that there was no sign of life.

 

“Is this your sister’s hotel, Countess?” he asked.

 

“No,” she answered; “mine. I told you that I came to Paris to attend

the Queen; but I have left that employment. I lead a life of leisure. I

am not so often at the Court.”

 

“Forgive me,” he said, for he felt as if he had asked her for an

explanation; “but I thought you wrote to me from the Hôtel Dubussy—”

 

“I did,” she interrupted. “Madame Dubussy is my sister; but I no longer

live there.”

 

Luc looked at her and smiled.

 

“Do you know that I passed her house the other night and wondered if you

were within? There was a great festival. Some one told me it was the

Hôtel Dubussy, but when I saw this house I thought perhaps I had been

mistaken.”

 

Carola drew the slim folds of the red “capuchin” over her stiff skirts.

 

“You are now in my house, a little outside the Porte St. Antoine. It is

rather a lonely part of Paris,” she said. “I have not been to my

sister’s house for some weeks.”

 

Luc did not answer. He liked her measured speech; she was careful with

words. His rare dealings with women had taught him that it was an

unusual gift in them. Even his mother at times threw words about in a

cloud regardless of their meaning, almost of their sense, and he had

known little Clémence de Séguy deal in tangled periods that left her

panting and worsted by her own language. But Carola used the foreign

tongue that was so familiar to her with cautious care; her almost

hesitating choice of sentences gave her a marvellous air of sincerity.

 

“Perhaps,” she continued, “you are wondering why I live here. You used

to call me ‘Mademoiselle’ in Bohemia, but I am a widow.”

 

This fact, that explained both her wealth and her freedom, gave him that

shock always given by a discovery about some one of whom we have known

nothing, but imagined much.

 

“I should have realized that, I think,” he said simply; “but you seemed

to me very young, Madame.”

 

They had now reached the bench under the wallflowers. Carola seated

herself.

 

“I am thirty,” she said; “I looked the same at twenty. The man I was

with in Bohemia was my husband’s brother. Madame Dubussy is his sister.

Now tell me about yourself. Why did you come to Paris?”

 

Luc smiled; his whole exquisite face changed and lit. There was nothing

in his heart that he could explain to a woman; the idea of it made him

smile.

 

“I intend to enter politics, as you surmised,” he answered. “I am a

poor man, Madame, and have had to begin my career afresh.”

 

“Did they want you to remain in Aix?” she asked. “My family? Yes.”

 

“But you have a great ambition, Monsieur.”

 

He was still smiling.

 

“How do you know so much about me?” he asked.

 

For the first time an expression came into her serene voice; it was an

expression of tenderness.

 

“Anyone would know everything about you, Monsieur, by looking at your

face,” she answered; then she turned and picked a spray of wallflower

from behind her and turned it over and over between her fingers.

 

The Marquis seated himself on the other end of the bench; he was

wondering what whim caused her to keep this dreary, closed-in, barren

garden, what fancy made her bring him there, where they were as remote

from the world as they had been when enwrapped by the Bohemian

snowstorms.

 

The whole square of grass was in shadow; only in the upper leaves of the

poplars the reluctant light still quivered. The air was rather cool and

the sky a dome of colourless light.

 

“There is a street at the end of the garden,” said Carola—“the Rue

Deauville, still the place is very quiet.”

 

“Will you continue to live here?” he asked, for this abode seemed

neither like her home nor the residence of any wealthy noblewoman,

pretentious to stateliness though it was.

 

“No,” answered the Countess. “I am going to Vienna this summer.”

 

She was still occupied in twirling the sprig of wallflower and did not

raise her eyes. The gorgeous quality of her appearance, delicate and

complete, was an anomaly with the humble and neglected garden. Her hood

had slipped back, and the long, stiff grey curls hung against her neck

and threw up the dusky shadow under her chin.

 

“It is strange enough,” said Luc, “that we two, meeting so curiously in

war-time, should be sitting here in this utter peace.”

 

“Do you regret the war?” she asked.

 

He would not answer that. She saw the pride that held him silent in the

profile turned towards her.

 

“You are better suited,” she said, “for war than politics, Monsieur.”

 

She was looking now at him, not at the flower turning in her fingers.

 

“My God,” she cried, with sudden soft force, “I wonder if you know what

kind of work politics is!” He thought of M. de Richelieu.

 

“I know well enough,” he said; “but there are great men still in

France, and I am resolved to serve the King.”

 

“Have you seen the King?” she asked quickly. “No, Madame.”

 

“Ah, well, they call him Louis the Well-Beloved, do they not?”

 

“How could he be otherwise—young, glorious, brave, the hope of France?”

A flash came into his voice and he raised his brows in a little frown,

as was his habit when excited.

 

Carola Koklinska moved in her seat, so that her silk mantle fell apart

over the long sheen of her gold gown.

 

“You must come to the fête at Versailles next week,” she said.

 

“M. de Caumont, who is a friend of my family, requested my presence

there with him,” answered Luc. “Shall I see you there, Madame?”

 

“Yes—oh yes.”

 

Luc was pleased with this meeting. Carola’s gravity, reserve, the slight

mystery of her background all encouraged the abstract ideas of strength,

purity, and spirituality that he had associated with her image.

 

“I have often thought of you,” he said, with a very tender chivalry,

“and always as an inspiration.”

 

She coloured painfully.

 

“You are on the quest of glory, are you not?” she asked in a breath.

 

“You have my secret,” he answered, half wistfully, half proudly. For the

moment both his reserve and his strength gave way before the impulse to

utterly confide in this strange, cold creature and take her comfort, her

admonitions, maybe her praise; but he checked the desire, though she

might have read it in his hazel eyes as he turned them softly, yet

mysteriously, on her. She rose, and he hardened instantly into utter

reserve.

 

“I have no company to-night, or I would desire you to stay,” she said.

“Some time you must come. I hope you will be very successful, Monsieur

le Marquis.”

 

The words were very formal, but as she spoke she held out her right

hand. Luc took it as he formed his answer, and dropped his grave eyes

from her face to her fingers.

 

A curious little shock of ‘surprise and dismay brought the colour to his

cheeks. On the Countess’s forefinger was a diamond ring curiously set

round with points formed of sapphires—the very jewel Luc had flung at

the feet of the page in the Governor’s house at Avignon, or its exact

counterpart.

 

“Why are you silent?” she asked rather haughtily, and withdrew her hand.

 

“The ring you wear reminded me of another I saw in the possession of

some one so different from you, Countess, that the mere connexion gave

me a start.”

 

“Which ring?” She wore several.

 

“The diamond, Madame, on your first finger.”

 

“That is very extraordinary!” she exclaimed.

 

“In what way, Madame?”

 

She flushed now.

 

“Oh, I did not know there were two such rings, that is all.” She seemed

desirous of dismissing the subject, and he had no excuse for pressing

it, though he wondered that she should not carelessly have told him how

she came by the jewel, and so have set at rest his first

impression—that she was wearing the actual jewel M. de Richelieu had

offered him as a bribe.

 

“I hope I shall see you at Versailles,” she said. She was walking

towards the gate, and her stiff skirts rustled on the untidy gravel

path. “I think you are on a sorrowful quest,” she added timidly;

“forgive me.”

 

“Believe me that I am happy,” he answered gravely.

 

Above the dark bulk of the house was the primrose-coloured moon, a thin

crescent; there was a shiver in the air. Luc looked at the Countess, and

thought that her eyes were suddenly flushed with tears.

 

“If I could help you, if I could prevent it,” she began passionately,

then checked herself and held out, curiously enough, her left hand.

“Good-bye,” she said.

 

He kissed her fingers and left her. As he passed along the darkening

street before her house he thought that he had never known the fading of

the sky and the first glimmering of the moon of such poignant beauty.