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

of those who care—”

 

She rose, erect in the stiff folds of her brocade gown.

 

“So you will not come to Austria?” she asked.

 

He smiled. “Did you think I would? You know my ambitions.”

 

Some passion ran through her and tightened her whole frame; she clasped

her hands together and pressed them against her bosom.

 

“Do you dare to despise me?” she cried. “Do you accuse me of fooling

you?”

 

“I fooled myself,” he answered quietly. “You seemed to me wonderful.”

 

The real blood outshone the paint on her cheeks.

 

“Am I less wonderful,” she asked, “because I come from the

gutter?—because I am a wanton and spy?”

 

“Not less wonderful to M. de Richelieu,” answered Luc, “but to me you no

longer exist save as a shadowy riddle. That can be no grief to you,

Madame.”

 

She unclasped her hands and raised her head; she took up her hat and

flung it down again; she cast herself on the settee and pulled at the

heavy lace on her bosom. All the while he watched her, never moving.

 

“I wanted to help you,” she said, breathing quickly. “It is not my fault

that you blindly accepted me—M. de Biron must know. I wished to help

you ever since we tramped the snow together in Bohemia.”

 

He thought of her with the dead child in her arms and holding the dying

head of Georges d’Espagnac; he looked at her tenderly.

 

“Poor soul!” he whispered.

 

The words seemed to sting her into fierceness.

 

“Am I so soiled that you pity me?” she demanded. “I pity you too—you

who are flinging everything away for glory—glory!” She laid a

passionate sneer on the word, but Luc was unmoved.

 

“I believe that you wished to help me—I think you must have a generous

soul, Madame. But you cannot help me.”

 

“So it seems,”—she became slack and weary again, and the blood ebbed

from her face,—“and yet there was a chance for one not so nice about

his means.”

 

Luc raised his hand and let it fall.

 

“Before I go, tell me why you wished to help me. I cannot understand why

you should have any interest in one so different from your world.”

 

She buried her face in the cushions at the head of the sofa and did not

answer.

 

The room seemed very silent and remote to Luc; the dusty motes in the

sunbeams conveyed a sense of desolation; they seemed very far away from

the world. The windows looked on the neglected garden, and there was not

a sound from without.

 

He stared at the woman with the hidden face. His vision of a flame-like

purity, scornful of the world, yet kind, serene, and lovely, was gone

for ever, but towards this creature who was so brave, so mysterious, yet

so commonplace, so rare and yet so cheap, the tool of party intrigue,

the slave of men like M. de Richelieu, he felt a cold pity, a cold

tenderness, a disenchanted interest. She had been slowly revealed to him

from the moment that M. de Richelieu crossed the long grass towards

them; she was now as plain to him as she ever could be. He did not

regret so much this exposure of the uses to which she had put her gift

of lovely life, but the fact that she had been able so long to fling a

false glittering light over his own path.

 

But now he was completely free of her; this light was, as he had told

her, for ever quenched, and those higher, holier fires that were the

true objects of his devotion burnt the brighter and more gloriously.

 

She lifted her face; it was pale and marked on the cheek with a red line

from the rough bullion edging of one of the cushions.

 

“I wonder how you would judge me if you knew the whole truth?” she said.

There was a weakness in this that yet further cast her outside his

sympathies.

 

“Neither you nor I know the whole truth of anything,” he answered.

 

“You are too courteous.” Her voice had sunk to a trembling whisper. She

seemed very angry. “Why do you not tell me to my face that you think

yourself degraded by my mere presence? Dear God, I wonder where you will

find the woman you imagine! You are too severe for this frivolous age!”

 

Her delicate railing meant nothing to him; he felt as he had felt in the

Governor’s house at Avignon—like one who has been diverted from his

path, and is anxious to return to it. He took up his beaver and his

green cloak.

 

His serenity seemed to exasperate her almost beyond endurance; she sat

up on the sofa, and the crystal heart depending from her bosom shuddered

with her distressed breaths.

 

“What have I done to you?” she asked frantically. “What have I done to

you? Never heed others—what have I done to you?”

 

He answered her gently.

 

“In truth, nothing. I shall never have anything to say against you—why

should I?”

 

She eyed him keenly and made another attempt to get within his guard.

 

“Why do you refuse my help?”

 

“Because I will not pay the terms,” he answered even more gently, and

stood with his cloak over his arm waiting his dismissal.

 

“You do scorn me,” she urged.

 

“Believe me, Madame, no.”

 

She paused and beat her foot on the ground.

 

“I will go,” he said, “if you are willing.”

 

“Stay,” she answered; “listen. There was one time—when you were on your

knees to my image—when you almost loved me, when you thought of me as

your wife.”

 

He coloured and did not move.

 

“You thought I was too wealthy and too great a lady, but you had dreams

of me. Just now, in the garden, you were ready for my signal.”

 

“Well?” he said unsteadily. “Well?”

 

“Would you make me your wife now?”

 

Luc stared at her, the red deepening in his face. “M. de Richelieu would

be willing,” she added. “Madame!” he cried. “I am noble.”

 

Carola laughed.

 

“I have touched you at last,” she answered feverishly. “You do despise

me.”

 

Luc was silenced and convicted; there fell a silence neither could

break. The brilliant sun was hidden by a cloud, and a greyness entered

the gorgeous but dreary little room.

 

“Good-bye,” said Carola at length.

 

She rose, and so unsteadily that she had to catch hold of the sofa for

aid; it slipped back under her hand, and the movement dragged the faded

red drapery from the picture behind her. A brilliant oil-painting of a

dark-haired woman clad in drapery ruffled by a light wind stepping

through an undergrowth of fairy bushes with two hounds in leash, flashed

out on Luc.

 

Something stirred in his memory; he saw that the face was the face of

Carola herself, younger, more blooming, and more gay.

 

“Who painted that picture?” he asked.

 

She looked swiftly over her shoulder; then went behind the sofa, picked

up the drapery, and flung it over the heavy frame.

 

“I thought it had been moved,” she murmured.

 

“You were the model?” asked Luc. “And the subject is Bellona?”

 

“Yes.”. She looked bewildered.

 

Luc saw again, very clearly, the old-fashioned chamber in Versailles and

the young suicide lying there; he saw this picture perhaps even more

vividly than the dark-eyed woman watching him from behind the striped

settee.

 

“What is the matter?” asked Carola heavily.

 

Luc collected himself and took a step away from her while he looked at

her with sudden flashing keenness.

 

She was bare indeed now, bare of the last glamour of any illusion—“from

the gutters of St. Antoine,” the dead man had said. Her brocades, her

jewels, her paint now seemed to hang on her as so many rags that made no

pretence to hide the stark crude thing they fluttered round. Luc could

not believe that a little while before she had dazzled his vision—she

was no longer even mysterious. He had nothing more to say to her; a

weary disgust sealed his spirit; his face flushed with changes of

thought, but he ended on silence.

 

“Ah, you are moved now, I think,” said Carola, in her old precise

tones—“by what, I wonder?”

 

Luc put his hand on the door knob; he had nothing to say to her.

 

“Will you not even speak to me?” she asked; she was gazing at him with

great intentness.

 

He opened the door and went out, closing it after him.

 

In the corridor he found M. de Richelieu seated on one of the

linen-covered chairs, whistling a little air under his breath and

beating time to it by delicate movements of his bare right hand. Seeing

the Marquis, he rose.

 

Luc paused; the two men were face to face. Luc noted that M. de

Richelieu’s handsome eyes were full of amusement. He could not wonder;

he smiled too, with his head a little thrown back.

 

“Who was she?” he asked; “eh, M. le Maréchal?”

 

The Duke slightly lifted his shoulders.

 

“I don’t know. She is quite marvellous. She came from “—he opened and

threw out his hand—“nothing.”

 

Luc bowed.

 

“Adieu, Monsieur. I regret if I have incommoded you by this

visit—forgive my ignorance.”

 

“I am still in your debt,” returned the Duke. “Tell me, now we meet

again, is there any way I can serve you?”

 

He spoke with a winning air of grandeur and perfect courtesy. Luc

responded—

 

“Yes,” he said suddenly, “you can present me to M. de Voltaire.”

 

“With the best will in the world,” replied M. de Richelieu. “You are, I

perceive, already something of a philosopher. Where is your lodging?”

 

“In the Rue du Bac.”

 

“You shall hear from me.”

 

The Duke accompanied him to the dark side staircase, directed him

carefully as to his way out, and then took leave of him.

 

Luc passed out of the house, out of the garden into the courtyard,

through the great iron gates, and so into the untidy, sordid street that

led to the wretched noisy quarter of St. Antoine. The sun was out again,

vivid and steady; it would be shining over a certain poor funeral in

Versailles. Luc felt sorry, as much for her as for the dead man;

possibly she was the finer material. He wished that he had never seen

either of them.

 

A strong Eastern scent clung to his cloak; he shook it out to the wind

and turned home.