Cyrano, p.12
Cyrano, page 12
“Good morning, M. de Bergerac,” he said, without rising. “I am indeed honored.”
“Naturally, you are,” assented Cyrano, with a deep bow, and fastened his mocking gaze upon Avillon. “It is a pity you did not take more direct measures to obtain your whip, monsieur, you might have saved us both some inconvenience. However—”
“However, you desire to see me, and I desire to see you,” said Avillon. “Come! Place to a guest! Your errand with me?”
“Is a simple one. By this time you have undoubtedly assured yourself that I come from Père Carré indeed,” said Cyrano, dropping his mocking air. “Well, then; do we work together or against each other?”
Avillon smiled slightly. “I know nothing about you, my dear M. de Bergerac,” he said.
“Excellent!” returned Cyrano blandly. “Then we quite understand one another.”
He paused, for a singular expression had come into the face of Avillon, whose eyes were directed at the reliquary given Cyrano by Père Carré. This golden star on its thin gold chain had escaped at his throat and hung against his royal purple velvet, lending richness to his appearance.
“You appear to be replete with stars, monsieur,” said Avillon slowly. “May I inquire whence came this sample of the goldsmith’s art? It seems familiar to me.”
“This reliquary? Oh, it was a token of esteem from our good Père Carré,” and Cyrano twisted his mustache complacently, more than a little pleased by the impression he was making. “You recognize it? Perhaps you know that it contains a fragment of feather from the wing of St. Michel himself. A very appropriate gift, under the circumstances.”
“So it would seem,” replied Avillon dryly. “There is something I desire to ask you, monsieur. On the occasion of our first meeting—you recall the two Egyptians? Well, then, when you were so astute as to take my whip, did you also take anything from them? In the way of a memento, perchance.”
Cyrano probed that wide and powerful face for the meaning behind these words. There must be a meaning, and a weighty one, he knew on the instant. The very fact of Avillon’s presenting such a question in this manner, showed its importance.
THEN, for the first time, Cyrano recollected the leather scapulary which the Egyptian woman had torn from her neck and thrust into the hand of Marianne. He had never thought about it since, but of a sudden the memory broke sharply on his mind. And, instantly, Cyrano lost his swagger and became an ingenuous and guileless young man.
“Ah, monsieur, I did not think it worth while to search those Egyptians,” he responded, with a shrug. “As to your whip, that was largely accident, for it served me well as a weapon. Also, it was a pretty toy. What might it be that so interests you? The Egyptians carried treasure, then?”
Avillon looked at him for a moment, then snarled.
“The saints preserve us from meddling fools such as you! Ah, well, what is done, is done!” And, suddenly as he had snarled, Avillon forced a smile, put on a mantle of affability, and held out a hand. “Come—I was wrong to despise you. I perceive that you are a gentleman of more worth than I had thought. Père Carré gave you that reliquary, eh? Have you any mind to part with it, monsieur?”
Cyrano looked rather stupid at this.
“But why would you want it?” he asked.
“As a matter of religious sentiment, of course,” was the negligent response.
“Alas, monsieur, I regret that I cannot accommodate you,” said Cyrano, with a sigh. “Unhappily, I myself have a certain amount of the same feeling—”
“Ah!” Avillon started as though in recollection. “I had all but forgotten. Among other things, I received a letter yesterday addressed to you, monsieur. Where did I put those dispatches? Here they are; and yours—
He produced a folded and sealed paper. Cyrano took it, and a sudden premonition seized upon him; the seal was that of Père Hugo Carré. Avillon was watching him, half smiling, as he broke the seal and opened the paper.
The letter was a curt instruction: to return immediately to Paris and report to the Dominican in Rue St. Jacques.
For a long moment Cyrano stared at the writing, his brain racing at top speed. For this, of course, he had to thank Avillon and his own imprudent words on the road near Palaiseau. Avillon was in charge of this intrigue and would brook no interference; at his word, Cyrano had been called in like a dog brought to heel.
The thought burned. Cyrano knew that he himself, and he alone, held all the threads of this affair in his own hand. He was not minded to serve as a spy and make report; no! Action was one thing, betrayal another. Now, all in a moment, was gone the glorious sense of free authority, the feeling that he was directing destiny and playing with puppet-men; this buoyant magnificence was suddenly stripped away, and again he was the drunken poet of the taverns.
And what of Marianne de Gisy?
“Thank you, monsieur,” said Cyrano quietly, as he folded the letter. A fire was burning in the hearth; Cyrano dropped the paper into the flames and turned, met the gaze of Avillon. “You are, perhaps, aware that within a few hours certain Englishmen will be landed upon the soil of France?”
“Eh?” Avillon’s face suddenly lighted up. “English? Is this true, monsieur?”
Cyrano looked at him and laughed, scornfully. Give up now, when he alone held mastery of the situation? Never!
“As to that, monsieur, you will know soon,” he said, and strode to the door. Avillon sprang erect, called sharply to him, but Cyrano left the room without response.
ON the stairs, he paused, looked down into the courtyard. Outside in the street, Dom Ratran’s coach had halted, with the horses; men were carrying out flagons of wine. In the courtyard, however, stood Effiat, talking with the three cavaliers whom Cyrano had observed; they were glancing up, had seen him, and Effiat looked up at him. Cyrano made an imperative gesture, repeated it. The four men exchanged a look and a word, then Effiat led the way to the stairs.
Cyrano knew now who they were. The note had told Effiat to meet them here; undoubtedly they were Huguenots, emissaries from Sieur de Lorges. And watching them, Cyrano laughed to himself.
“Well?” exclaimed Effiat sharply, joining Cyrano.
“Well enough, monsieur,” said Cyrano gayly, so that the three others could hear. “I think that your destiny sits in that first room yonder. Is it true that within a day there will be a party of English landed near by?”
A low oath burst from Effiat; the three cavaliers exchanged a look of consternation and dismay. Cyrano smiled ironically. True, then!
“If this Sieur d’Avillon goes on to the Mont,” he pursued, “he will certainly interview M. de Salignan, who will as certainly summon a few score men and throw them into the place. I am not aware, gentlemen, just how such action would coincide with your private desires—”
“Ha, Effiat!” said one of the cavaliers in a low voice. “Do you want to see us all follow the road my uncle went, to the scaffold?”
Effiat reached out and plucked from its sheath the large poniard at Cyrano’s belt; a tide of passion suffused his features, and without a word he pushed Cyrano savagely to one side and strode past him. The other three followed, hands at swords; steel rasped on scabbard as they plunged into the corridor.
Cyrano stood there for a space,, looking down at the courtyard. He knew these great nobles, these crafty and indecisive men, slow to impulse, so well served as seldom to serve themselves; put blade in hand, sudden fury in heart, and tragedy came swiftly. A smile of sardonic delight touched his lips.
“And I, Savinien de Cyrano, the gutter bravo, the hireling—at my bidding he goes to do his own killing! I like this. Decidedly, it has a savor! I am indeed become Marquis de Bergerac when an Effiat does my work for me!”
EFFIAT reappeared suddenly. Murder was in his white face, and his gray eyes were blazing and scintillating sparks of light; he was breathing hard. He paused, looked down at his hands, and with his crimson cloak rubbed at a red smear on his right hand.
“Come,” he said abruptly, and gestured toward the courtyard. “Let us be off. They are destroying his papers.”
“But, monsieur, you forgot my poniard!” complained Cyrano with a grimace. “And now I have no weapon at all, but the pistols at my saddle. Decidedly, M. l’Abbé, you must give me dispensation—release me from my vow not to carry sword!”
Effiat looked straitly at him for an instant, and caught his humor. In this glance the two men came to closer understanding than ever before. A savage little laugh came to Effiat’s lips.
“I release you, and Dom Ratran will verify it,” said he ironically. “Get a sword when and where you can—but in God’s love let’s be off! You and I must ride hard this day if we’re to meet M. de Lorges.”
He was descending the stairs hastily as he spoke. Cyrano followed, blinking, taking his time. Meet Sieur de Lorges, eh? Then he had been right. A meeting with the Huguenot leaders. And up there in the room papers were being burned while a dead man lay sprawled across the table with a poniard sunk in his throat.
“Ah, M. d’Avillon!” murmured Cyrano, glancing up behind him at the corridor. “You have turned many an ugly trick in your day; but the sorriest of them all, for yourself, was when you made Père Carré recall me. I am glad I didn’t kill you myself. Not that you’d burden my conscience particularly—but it’s good to be able to tell the truth occasionally. And when I tell Salignan who killed you—ha! Au revoir, Sieur d’Avillon; I’ll see you on the other side the Styx in due time.”
When Cyrano came out to the coach he found Effiat speaking with the prior, while Marianne and M. d’Ouville sipped stirrup-cups and listened.
“These gentlemen informed me that the Royal Commissioners are at Avranches, so it were best for me to ride on there at once and abandon hunting for to-day; but I need not spoil our party. Do you ride on to Brion, my friends. I will join you there some time to-night. Perhaps M. de Bergerac would care to ride to Avranches with me?”
“With all my heart!” exclaimed Cyrano, only too eager. He met the eyes of Marianne and smiled reassurance. Dom Ratran was all for sending an escort with Effiat, but this the latter refused point-blank.
While they were talking the three Huguenot cavaliers rode out of the inn yard and took their departure, spurring hard. It would probably be some little time ere the fate of Avillon was discovered.
So Effiat put Marianne into her saddle, then Cyrano came to her and touched his lips to her hand and looked up into her eyes.
“The Egyptian’s scapulary—you have it?” he murmured. Her eyes widened.
“Yes; but not here.”
“No matter. Au revoir! Until to-night, Dom Ratran!”
Two minutes later Cyrano and Effiat clattered away together on the road to Avranches. But Avranches was not their destination.
Chapter XI
—RIDES WITH STRANGE MEN.
EFFIAT and Cyrano rode on the road to Avranches; Dom Ratran, with the rest of the party, passed through Pontorson for his manor of Brion. Almost immediately on their departure from the inn, the tavern and the little town were flung into turmoil. A shrieking chambermaid brought every one in the place crowding into Avillon’s chamber.
The room was in utmost confusion. Avillon, who had dragged himself to the doorway, lay in a pool of blood, conscious, his eyes open. One hand grasped the little braided whip with the gold disk in the handle. The innkeeper rushed in, cursed the pack of them for staring fools, ordered a surgeon summoned from the hospital, and lifted the head of Avillon in his arms.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, seeing the silver haft of a large poniard protruding from the side of the dying man. Avillon pushed the whip into his hand.
“Take this—take this—Salignan!” murmured Avillon. The death sweat was on his face, his eyes were distended: “Tell him—”
A long shiver and Sieur d’Avillon was dead.
Thus it chanced that, long ere the tide came sweeping in again across the wide leagues of sand, an hostler from the inn sought out the Marquis de Salignan with word of what had happened at Pontorson. None knew why or by whose hand Avillon had been slain, nor indeed did any know his identity; but Salignan knew it. He looked at the two articles given him—the cleaned poniard, and the braided whip. He knew that whip, as many men knew it; but its secret was quite unknown to him. So he laid it aside and forgot it.
The poniard, also, he knew very well; and here entered a singular toil of destiny. Cyrano had bought this poniard in a booth of the Pont Neuf, quite careless of the arms adorning the silver hilt. As it chanced, these arms had belonged to one Count de St. Méloir, a gentleman killed at the siege of Arras, and with whom Salignan was very familiar, since their estates were adjoining. Thus, at first meeting Cyrano, he had instantly recognized the dagger; and now, knowing that this weapon had taken the life of Avillon, Marquis de Salignan smiled grimly to himself and laid his plans.
If Salignan did not know the secret of the little whip, however there was another at the Mont who did; and this was the lackey Mervaut.
MEANWHILE Cyrano and Effiat were riding, not for Avranches, but for Ducey, the seat of the Montgommery. When they left the highway, Effiat pulled up and turned his horse to face Cyrano.
“Monsieur,” he said with a determined air, “it is time we had a word regarding the work ahead. I take it that you are with us. I propose, then, to place Mont St. Michel in the hands of Sieur de Lorges.”
“Who will present the remarkable spectacle of a Huguenot being the abbot of a Benedictine monastery, eh?” and Cyrano burst out laughing heartily. Effiat frowned.
“This is no fit subject for jest, my dear Bergerac. No sacrilege will be committed; the abbey remains unharmed; as a fortress it will be placed in Huguenot hands. Let us have a thorough understanding here and now. Does this offend your sense of the fitness of things?”
Cyrano shrugged. “M. d’Effiat, my sense of propriety does not extend to religious matters; I am, thank Heaven, no theologian! As to politics, they bore me. Your noble act of renunciation has my fullest approval, and my sword shall back it up. Are you satisfied?”
Effiat met the gay, mocking eyes, the light smile, and he nodded; but his narrow eyes regarded Cyrano fixedly.
“Entirely. There is another slight matter which I should like to discuss with you—touching Mlle. de Gisy.”
Effiat paused, thoughtfully, and in this pause he was very close to death. Cyrano, however, reconsidered; his pistols were empty, and he had no weapon whatever. Besides, it was not yet time for Effiat to die. So, being unable to say what he wished, Cyrano twirled his mustache and said the first thing that came into his head.
“My dear Effiat, really you should not discuss this matter with me at all, but with M. le Marquis de Salignan.”
A cowardly thing, shifting the issue thus, yet necessary. Having spoken, Cyrano’s laughter died out. Upon him settled that old terrible sense of futility, that realization of his origin, of his real self, of his very life. At every turn he was balked. His heart hungered to kill Effiat here and now because of Marianne; but the issue presented, he was forced to evade it. He was a mockery, a shadow, a bit of scum caught helpless in the drift of the deeper currents of society. In this world where brains meant nothing, where birth, blood, caste, meant everything, he was a lost man. The very fates conspired against him. And so, despising himself, he threw the name of Salignan into the game—and won his play.
Effiat started as though stung. For an instant his eyes widened; he was recalling little incidents, words, gestures that had passed. A slow pallor crept into his face, and his hand wandered toward the poniard at his girdle.
“Ah!” he said. “Ah! Come, then.”
And catching up his reins he drove in spurs like a madman; Cyrano followed him. It was only a little past noon when these things transpired, since the midday meal at the Mont had been suited to the turn of the tide.
As they rode, three highly important matters occupied the mind of Cyrano. First, a weapon. His fine brass pistols were unloaded, as the salt air would ruin a load within a few hours, and he had no powder. Cyrano was no fool; if he had forsworn wearing a sword he had not forsworn using one, and it was for a sword that his fingers itched now. He had no intention of allowing false pride to interfere with self-preservation.
Second, the scapulary—if such it really were—given by the dying Egyptian woman to Marianne. In this bit of leather sewn on a cord, Cyrano now saw, might lie the reason for Avillon’s having instigated the murder of those two wanderers. But what could be within this scrap of leather to justify two deaths?
And third—the reliquary at his own neck. Moved by curiosity, Cyrano had once or twice examined this flat star of gold, but had found no indication that it opened or contained anything. Being what he was, he found himself skeptical of relics in general, and had no belief whatever in the authenticity of this particular relic. The star had on one side the device of the Company of Jesus—which, Cyrano shrewdly reflected, was reason enough for the Dominican Père Carré to lose no sleep over parting with the Jesuit relic. Avillon’s thinly disguised interest in the star now piqued Cyrano’s curiosity afresh, but for the moment he had no chance to gratify it.
“Time enough!” he told himself cheerfully. “At present, larger things are afoot. This rascally conspiracy—h-m! Salignan won’t believe anything I say, there’s no time to write Père Carré, Avillon is out of the way; only Cyrano remains. Well, why not? France is usually saved by those whom she despises.”
THE afternoon was wearing well on when Effiat and Cyrano, passing through the little burg of Ducey, came to the château of the Montgommery; nor were they the first travelers to come this day to the imposing structure of bricks and granite, with its tall Corinthian columns. Built in 1624 by Gabriel II, this château, with its lands adjoined the barony of Ardevon, the chief mainland fief of Mont St. Michel; and in his lighter moments the present Sieur de Lorges was wont to sweep through Ardevon with his retainers and his huge packs of dogs, laying waste the fields of the peasants and giving no heed to life or property.
